About

Dr. Melissa McCreery


Psychologist and Emotional Eating Coach

Life's too short to spend it struggling with overeating - or the scale.

I’ve spent my professional life helping women break cycles with emotional eating, overeating, and stress – not by hard work and willpower, but by simple changes that make life more enjoyable and create peace with food.

I’m a psychologist, a coach, and a writer. I’m the author of The Emotional Eating Rescue Plan for Smart, Busy Women and my approach has been featured in places like The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Health, Fitness, Self, and Weight Watcher’s Magazine.

My core values are compassion, open-mindedness, a passionate belief in growth and possibility, and deep respect for our humanity.

I will always take a stand for moving beyond what’s keeping you small or stuck – in your thinking, your behavior, your beliefs, or in the world. Growth is challenging, and change can feel awkward and painful, but numbness, avoidance, and defensiveness only keep us trapped – or worse.

I’m gentle, but I will challenge you to see hard truths. And I relish asking questions that you (and I) may not know the answer to. Yet.

About making changes:

You may not know this, but it’s okay (it's normal) to feel confused, unsure, or clumsy as hell when we step outside our comfort zones.

When we poke at our blind spots, breakthroughs happen.

Also, the world needs more people who are open to learning something new.

My story might start like yours...

You may not know this, but it’s okay (it's normal!) to feel confused, unsure, or clumsy as hell when we step outside our comfort zones.

When we poke at our blind spots, breakthroughs happen.

For years, struggles with emotional eating, food, weight, and how to eat took up far more energy than I can now quite believe. I’ve binged, grazed, starved, and visited the scale compulsively. I’ve skipped meals and tried to live on crazy diets and food plans until I had no idea whether I was hungry or full or what I should be eating.

My weight was a moving target, but any weight loss never lasted and the final result always seemed to be five more pounds than when I had started.

There was a time when I had four sizes of pants in my closet and I needed them all to be sure I’d have something to wear. There were “good days” and “bad days” depending on how I ate, and bad days always ended in more eating.

Despite success in other areas of my life, the feeling that I couldn’t control my eating or my weight left me feeling ineffective and stupid for struggling with something that seemed like it should be straightforward and effortless.

My struggles with food meshed perfectly with a nagging belief that I needed to do more, that there was always more to accomplish and more to prove. Perfectionism, wanting to please, and the often unrealistic expectations I had for myself contributed to using food to fill voids, provide comfort, numb out, and manage stress.

Thankfully, I found a way out - a combination of help and strategies that let me step sideways and exit the crazy emotional eating roller coaster I had been trapped on. This wasn’t a temporary fix (been there, tried that unsatisfying route). Instead, I found a way to create a permanent, solid, ease and peace with food, with eating and with my weight. I left the crazy overeating madness behind, and I never looked back.

I believe we deserve to be living our best version of our lives, yet over the years, I’ve repeatedly witnessed the way struggles with emotional eating are robbing women of their sense of effectiveness and their confidence in their ability to be successful. I work with busy, high-achieving women all over the world who have had great success in many areas of their lives—they are wonderful mothers, successful business owners, leaders in their professions—amazingly talented women who seemingly can do anything—and yet they are so frustrated with themselves because they can’t figure out why they haven’t been successful with eating less and losing weight.

In many ways, overeating and emotional eating can become side effects of the high-achieving, busy lifestyle many of us are living. Food is an all-too-convenient way to comfort, soothe, and reward ourselves when we don’t feel like we have time to do anything else. It’s always available, we can partake pretty mindlessly, and we usually don’t have to say no to anyone or anything to treat ourselves.

Smart busy women already know that when they are overeating they need to eat less and that emotional eating isn’t helping them. The problem is, it’s not what you know, it’s what you can do, and when you have a lot on your plate, you probably don’t need more rules, more “shoulds,” and more on your to-do list—you need a whole new approach to food that addresses why it’s so darn powerful in your life to begin with.

And this is where the work that I do begins.

Learn about my 1:1 Coaching

These programs have worked for physicians, CEOs, successful professionals, and busy women all over the world.

What you should know about me:

  • I know that anything is possible. Case-in-point: an adamant PE dropout, I took up running at age 40. I am now that crazy woman who loves running marathons.
  • I am a feminist from birth. I was stuffing envelopes in support of the Equal Rights Amendment while I was learning to read. It still hasn’t passed and that’s just wrong. We can’t talk about peace and freedom of any kind without first addressing systemic inequality and racism. Black lives matter.
  • I am the Queen of Hypothetical Questions. I love to ask “What would you do if …” and I though I can rarely answer, I love to hear what you say.
  • Nothing happens before morning coffee. I mean it.
  • Everything and anything will look at least a little better after I've spent some time outdoors.

Working with Melissa renewed my sense of purpose. I discovered Melissa soon after I merged my company and became a partner in a large consulting firm. I was on an airplane every week (and) I was on a non-stop out of control roller coaster. I was working 80-hour weeks, I wasn’t sleeping and I was certainly overeating. I looked for solutions and found Melissa... She gave me the courage to take control. I found the exit door and never looked back. I have lost 40 pounds. I sleep. I have time for my family. I have started several new business ventures. So, now I am a Type A business woman on my terms.

- SUSAN SPAULDING | Coaching Client -

If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you that so much of my energy was focused towards an obsession with food and my body. I was either thinking about what I ate, what I planned to eat, how much I disliked my body, thinking that if only I could get a handle on my eating, everything in my life would improve.

I had lost weight through dieting at different points in my life, but it never stayed off... Something has changed...

I am a full time financial advisor and mother of two. Since I began working with Dr. McCreery a year ago, I have increased my income substantially, still attend all of my children’s school events and sporting matches, my house is more organized than it has ever been … I am finally happy in my body. I have lost about 30 pounds, I eat whatever I want, stop when I am no longer hungry, and most importantly, the obsessions are gone. Gone are the mornings promising that I am finally going to be “good”, gone are the nights reprimanding myself for everything I did wrong, gone is the constant decision making about what to eat and when to stop.

- J. | Coaching Client -

Background and Credentials


Dr. Melissa McCreery earned both her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University. She completed international coaching certification through Mentor Coach, and has been certified as an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) by the International Coach Federation (ICF). She is a member of the American Psychological Association and is a past member of the Editorial Advisory Board for WLS (Weight Loss Success) Lifestyles magazine.

Known for her passion, energy, and gentle persistence, Melissa’s emotional eating clients benefit from her creativity, caring, and her unstoppable belief that peace with food is attainable for everyone and that life is simply too short not to live your best version of it. A busy woman herself, Melissa lives with her husband in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Apply for Private Coaching

These programs have worked for physicians, CEOs, successful professionals, and busy women all over the world. Let's talk about how I can help you.

Anti-racism 

As a company, we are committed to anti-racism. We condemn the systemic racism and violence against Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color.  We believe we can always do better at identifying and uprooting racism within ourselves and our culture and we strive to improve and learn from our mistakes. As a company, we commit to anti-racist education, and are actively working to increase our spending with Black-owned and anti-racist businesses, and to being more deliberate in our commitment to diversity, inclusion, equity, and anti-racism. Learning is a process, and we are committed to embracing discomfort as we navigate difficult and emotional subjects.

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