Hi! I’m Melissa Landry, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and food freedom expert.

I’m here to show you how to find food freedom so you can enjoy the life you deserve without food guilt and body shame.

I do this work for women in bigger bodies because I know how much being repeatedly told to “lose weight” all your life can hurt your ability to find true health and happiness. I believe you deserve better.

My Mother did too.I remember when she said, “I don’t want you to be fat like me.”⁣⁣

It confused me back then. Now it breaks my heart.⁣⁣

My mother said these words because she learned to feel unsafe and unworthy in her bigger body. Like any mother would, she wanted me to be safe. And since she learned to be thin was to be safe, she wanted thinness for me. ⁣

Diet culture fuels our obsession with losing weight at all costs. It passes through the generations because we buy in to the idea that women should look a certain way in order to be respected. We teach women to make themselves smaller in order to be safe and acceptable⁣, instead of creating safety for each of us to be who we are.⁣ This creates a situation where:⁣⁣

  • the child on the left, me, grows up praised for her body, afraid to “lose it” – or else she’ll be unseen
  • the child on the right, my Mom, grows up food-policed and “helped” to control her size, afraid she’ll never be thin, and asked to live with food guilt and body shame
The pursuit of weight loss took my mother’s joy. And being a kid, that meant it took some of mine too.

Trying to lose weight most of her life continuously worsened my Mom’s body image and made it hard for her to feel present in her life. I can close my eyes and remember diet books on our shelves and Jenny Craig in the freezer. I can feel my sadness seeing her stand in the very back of group photos so she could hide her bigger body. That is, if she got in the photo at all.  

My mother learned to fear her body size and this fueled her painful pursuit of on-again, off-again weight loss diets for years. Oftentimes, people would praise her weight loss, without really knowing what she was going through to make it happen. Each time she fell “off a diet”, she’d enter long periods of feeling defeated: she’d start overeating and give up on her self-care entirely. 

When I became a Registered Dietitian, my first job was in weight loss research. I was shocked by what I found. My mother’s weight struggles weren’t unique. It all started to make sense.

Even though the programs I worked for provided the “gold-standard” and “tried-and-true” tools like cutting-edge nutrition science, counseling, group support, meal replacements, and tracking tools for accountability, most of our clients would regain the weight back within two years. These clients fought so much guilt and shame as they struggled to stick with their plan and keep the weight off. 

I wanted to know why otherwise motivated people who cared about their health and happiness kept backsliding, so I started investigating. I was surprised to find that my mother’s story actually backs up some well known research findings. Does it back up your story too?

Did chronic dieting:
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lead to more weight gain? most who try regain their weight back (and then some) within 5 years
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slow your metabolism? the more you diet, the harder it becomes to lose weight
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hurt your physical health? weight yo-yoing negatively impacts your body, and may even lead to worsened cardiovascular health
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develop disordered eating behaviors? like obsessive tracking, making up for “bad” foods, and binges
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worsen mental health and make you feel stigmatized at the doctor? Carrying shame and guilt hurt your mental and emotional wellbeing

    For me, to say “diets don’t work” isn’t enough. It’s more than that. Diets hurt people as we encourage harmful eating behaviors in women like my mother from childhood. ⁣All because we are afraid of bigger bodies. My mother put her life on hold because of her size. She didn’t have to. And neither do you. 

    As a Registered Dietitian I’m calling for us to respect and care for bigger bodies, because I believe that none of us, no matter our size, should have to live life stuck in food guilt.

    I built No More Guilt Coaching so I could empower women to become the first in their family to stop dieting and body image concerns from passing through the generations – just like I am. If you’re done feeling obsessed with food and want to feel at home in your bigger body, I want you to know you can.

    When food and body image isn’t the center struggle of your life, I want to know, what joy is waiting for you? I want you to see yourself beyond your weight and size. Most of all, I want you to be able to connect with the people you love – fully and without holding back. 

    To help you get to know me beyond my weight and size, here’s five fun facts about me:

    1. I was voted “MOST MEMORABLE” in high school 
    2. I’m TERRIFIED of inchworms. Even the emoji freaks me out 🐛
    3. My last meal would absolutely be my Nonna’s chicken cutlets and pasta
    4. I used to HATE my curly hair – now I love it!
    5. I love personality tests. My Myers-Briggs is ENFJ and Enneagram is 2w1. How about you?

    I’m a big time lover-of-life who thrives making others feel warm and energized, especially over a nice meal and wine. Now that I’m food free, I have more space to enjoy this life with my husband Dave and our fur-baby, Lucy around our home city of Boston. I can’t wait to get to know the person you are, when you find food freedom, too!

    Let’s meet for a discovery call so I can get to know you, too!

    learn more

    Education and Credentials

    B.S., Nutrition and Dietetics, University of New Hampshire, 2009

    M.Ed., Instructional Design, University of Massachusetts, 2016

    Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics)

    Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist (State of Massachusetts)

     

     

    Features and Interviews

    Well + Good: Signs your doctor holds weight bias

    Real Simple: 10 body positivity podcasts to download for a boost of self-love

    Clever Girls Know Podcast: The parallels between your diet, health, and finances

    Diet Culture Rebel Podcast: Growing up with a Mom who is always dieting

    Diet Riot Podcast: How Covid-19 May Affect Your Relationship with Food

    Empowering Dietitians Podcast: Being a Straight-Sized Intuitive Eating RD

    Dietitian Boss Podcast: How Melissa Landry Focuses on HAES

    Marky Mark and The Fitness Bunch: Body Respect and Bigger Bodies

    intuitive eating nutritionist

    did you grow up in a family obsessed with weight and dieting? 

    If generational dieting trauma impacts your relationship to food and body image today, you're not alone. I'm Melissa, Registered Dietitian offering 1:1 nutrition therapy and body image coaching that takes into account your lived experience with disordered eating, eating disorders, and body image concerns.

    After the 1x1 program with Melissa, I have stopped dieting and no longer feel the need to. I have learned to trust my body and eat without guilt, a concept that baffled me during our first call.

    I have talked about my journey and healing my relationship with food with others, being vulnerable about something that would normally cause me to put up a wall. I’m learning my boundaries and how to cope with negative and positive emotions more than ever before without leaning restricting and binging.

    Melissa helped me change my life and learn to take care of my body after over a decade of learning to do the opposite - without dieting.

    - Amanda S., former client