Hello and welcome! I’m Dr. Alexandra MacKillop, a functional medicine doctor, food scientist, and intuitive eater. On this blog, I combine my healthcare knowledge and personal experience, writing about women’s health, nutrition and hormones from a holistic perspective. My goal is to help you take the best possible care of yourself so you can live a vibrant, fulfilling life.
I used to think that health was all about diet and exercise, and I was pretty much convinced that kale would save the world. Superfoods, anyone?
Yet no matter how much kale I ate, (or how much I read about the many merits of kale on the internet,) I wasn’t making any progress with my health. Instead, I just felt neurotic…I was obsessed with clean eating yet couldn’t understand why I was always bloated. (Maybe it was my weekend binges that I couldn’t get a handle on…) I worked out every day but my joints were always sore and I was beyond tired. I tried every supplement I could find, but I didn’t know what, if anything was working. The anxiety was relentless and I was miserable, but none of my doctors could help me figure out what was wrong. Can you relate?
Everything finally clicked when in my 20’s when I booked an appointment with a holistic doctor who helped me get to the bottom of what was really going on. As it turns out, my obsession with “clean eating” was causing me to miss out on important nutrients that I really needed to be healthy. I was stressing myself into sickness and my disordered eating habits only made things worse. All of that was impacting my thyroid, my gut, my fertility and more. Finding a doctor who actually listened to me and knew what to test for was essential because once I understood what was wrong, I was able to make a plan to finally start feeling good again.
My own health journey transformed my perspective of what well-being really is, and inspired me to want to help others build a foundation for wellness so they can avoid the struggles that I faced. After studying food science and nutrition in college I went on to earn a medical degree so I could be the doctor that I wish I’d had earlier as a young adult.
Wellness, nutrition, health and hormones are anything but simple, so the goal of my writing is to make health information as accessible as possible. I want to help you feel empowered to make the best decisions for your health within the context of your own life and values.
In addition to my blog, I work as a functional medicine doctor, seeing patients online and in-person at an integrative medicine office near Chicago. Click here to learn more about my functional medicine and intuitive eating practice.
I’ve also written a book on the topics of faith and intuitive eating, called Fulfilled. It’s available wherever books are sold, including both online and retail shops. Order your copy wherever you usually buy books! I also invite you to check out some of my other resources–Faith, Food, Freedom (a faith-based devotional), Foundations (an intuitive eating journaling guide) and Healthy, Happy, Whole (a 30-day holistic health plan)–all of which are available on Amazon.
On my blog, you’ll find posts about…
Functional medicine topics, women’s health & hormones, a no-nonsense approach to nutrition and intuitive eating, strategic self-care strategies, and more! New blog posts are available a few times per month. Here are some popular posts in each category:
Women’s Health & Hormones
- Natural Alternatives to Fertility Drugs
- Basal Body Temperature 101 (How to Track Your Cycle)
- Estrogen Dominance (what it is and what you can do about it)
Intuitive Eating
- 10 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Relationship with Food
- How I Stopped Binge Eating Breakfast Cereal
- It’s Okay to Feel Full
Thyroid Health
- The Root Cause of Hypothyroidism
- 3 Ways Dieting Can Cause Hypothyroidism
- Hormones 101 (The Great, Big, Web of Connections)
Body Image
- Clothes That Have No Place in Your Closet
- Embrace Your Belly
- Body Trust vs. Putting Your Trust in Your Body
My work has also appeared on both Christian and Nutrition blogs such as RELEVANT Magazine, (in)courage and Naughty Nutrition, as well as language and scientific journals such as Claritas Journal of Language and Culture and The Purdue Journal of Undergraduate Research.
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*Note: “Nutra-Intuition” used to be the name of my blog, and you may come across this term on my site.
A note about privacy…
Often on my blog and in my writings (books, articles, etc.) I share stories from clinical practice. Please note that none of these anecdotes describe individual people or patients who I have worked with in my private coaching or in clinical medicine in a personal or identifying way.
I typically “describe” patient/client encounters for one of two reasons: to share a sentiment or attitude towards dieting that I am planning to address in the post, or to share a story of how I personally was feeling during the encounter. If I am describing a patient’s attitude or struggle, the circumstances of the shared story have been changed such that they no longer accurately reflect the individual person’s story but do reflect a common sentiment shared among those recovering from disordered eating. For example, if the story presents a person who struggles with over exercising (running) and binge eats sweets after work, I would phrase the vignette to describe a person who struggles with over exercising (weight lifting) and binge eating at midnight. The idea is the same but the “character” in the story is not.
The privilege and honor of the work that I do is not lost on me, and I am careful to protect the privacy of those I serve in clinical practice. By changing the scenarios I describe in my writing as such, I am striving to convey a human experience while at the same time protecting the actual humans who have entrusted me with their health.
Dr. Alexandra MacKillop 