Liv Lighter with Gina

Heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined, yet most women say their doctor has never brought it up. Dr. Olinca Trejo, a naturopathic doctor and Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, explains why heart risk climbs after menopause and why women’s symptoms often look nothing like the movie version of a heart attack. She also names the one cholesterol test worth asking for.

Gina and Dr. Olinca also cover what hormones mean for weight loss in your 30s, 50s and 70s, why HRT won’t make you lose weight, and what to do if you’ve bee...

When you feel stuck, the instinct is to add more: another rule, another habit, another item on a list of 103 things you’re “supposed” to be doing. But sometimes the missing piece isn’t what you think, sometimes it’s connection.

Gina Livy and Odette talk about how loneliness in midlife can quietly pull you back to old habits, including turning to food for comfort. They get honest about how hard it is to make friends after 40, why so many plans get cancelled, and what actually helps: starting small, following through, and letting your friendships change as you do...

How many photos have you sat out because you were waiting to lose the weight first?

Gina Livy gets real about something so many women over 40 do: putting life on hold until the scale says we’re ready. That means skipping the family photo, dinner with friends, even date night because of the bread basket. She talks about why fear of success can stall weight loss right when it starts working. You need to know self-love was never supposed to depend on a number.

She also shares what she got wrong when menopause an...

Which supplements are actually worth taking? And why do so many people lose hair while they’re losing weight?

Naturopathic doctor Dr. Paul Hrkal joins Gina Livy to walk through the five foundational supplements he considers safe and effective for most people. Then he breaks down six common causes of hair loss, and why an expensive hair gummy may not fix what’s really going on. They also cover obesogens, the everyday chemicals linked to weight gain, and simple swaps that lower your exposure without the panic.

Where to Find Dr. Paul

In...

You lost the weight. You’re eating well. So why is the food noise still so loud at 9 PM?

Guest Jenna Jones, a social worker and psychotherapist turned coach who specializes in food noise, joins Gina Livy and Odette to unpack what’s really going on. Her take: food noise is information. Sometimes it’s hunger. Sometimes it’s a food rule that doesn’t fit your life. And sometimes it’s grief. When food has been your comfort for decades, losing it as a coping tool can feel like losing a friend.

Where to Fin...

“Aging gracefully” never sat right with Melissa Grelo. The longtime co-host of CTV’s The Social and host of the Aging Powerfully with Melissa Grelo podcast joins Gina Livy to talk about menopause, midlife, and why this is the stage to stop shrinking and start taking up space.

They talk about finding your voice after decades of people-pleasing, and why speaking up is a muscle that gets stronger every time you survive the pushback. Melissa calls herself a recovering perfectionist. She shares how she let go of all-or-nothing thinking about exercise and why she calls strength traini...

What would you learn if you ate a few bites less at every meal for one week? Gina Livy and Kim walk through a simple portion experiment. It’s built to help you recognize the moment you’ve had enough, which is one of the most useful skills for midlife weight loss and for keeping the weight off.

They talk about why so many people would rather serve themselves less than leave food on the plate. They cover how food waste, grocery costs and fear of hunger keep you eating past full, and Gina gives a blun...

Holiday season is coming, and if you've lost weight, it can stir up more than the food: family opinions, old roles, grief, and the urge to control everything. Gina Livy and Odette talk through how to keep the weight off without turning it into a full-time job, from the boring basics that keep working to why "accountability" doesn't have to mean beating yourself up.

You'll hear how to rewire old food habits through repetition, how to indulge in a different way (slower, more present, no guilt), and what to do when family brings out the old...

Gina and Dr. Trejo talk about what happens when your stress outpaces your capacity to recover, and why that hits harder in perimenopause and menopause. They get into loneliness, social media overload, the "doctor says it's not your cortisol" frustration, and why doing less often works better than adding more. You'll hear which supplements have research behind them, which popular ones don't, and a simple breathing reset you can start today.

This conversation is educational, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before starting any supplement, especially if you take medication.

Where...

Two sleep experts. One question for nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning: what do you do when you're exhausted, overwhelmed and your brain won't switch off?

Gina talks with Dr. Beverley David, a clinical psychologist who has been teaching insomnia treatment since 1998, and Alanna McGinn, a sleep, stress and divorce specialist. They cover why rumination wrecks sleep, how to break the worry loop with small tools like a word or a giraffe, why moving your body matters more for sleep than for burning calories, and the habits that quietly sabotage midlife sleep.

Where to...

You've done the weight loss. So why is your brain still negotiating with a bag of chips at 8PM? Gina and Odette get honest about food noise, why chasing a "cure" misses the point and how a simple pause can change how you respond to it. You'll also hear why mindfulness isn't extra work, what to do about food noise on medication, and a real conversation about letting go of the urge to fix everything for everyone, yourself included.

This podcast aligns with Day 22 of our Fall Maintenance Program, members can find video in our Livy...

Your weight can swing several pounds in a single day, and most of it has nothing to do with fat. Today, Gina Livy explains why the scale often goes up right before it goes down. She covers how sore muscles, water retention, a late night, and a weekend of chips can all move the number. She also explains why weighing yourself once a week hides the pattern you need to see.

Then she gets honest about food noise: the constant calorie math, bargaining, and guilt that can run your whole day. She walks through how the...

If you feel guilty when you're not busy, you're far from alone. Odette flies solo for this midweek conversation and starts with how busyness has quietly become a measure of self-worth, and doing less can feel like not doing enough.

With a surprise visit from Gina, she shares the feeling with some practical advice about how you can support the new version of yourself by having and doing less.

"Just because I can doesn't mean I should."

This podcast aligns with Day 17 of our Fall Maintenance Program, members can find...

Why does change feel hardest right after you've committed to it?

Breathwork trainer and transformation coach Meg Pearson has guided thousands of people through major life changes. She joins Gina Livy to walk through her seven-stage pivot cycle: the niggle, the resistance, the leap, and "the void." They talk about why we cling to familiar habits even when they aren't serving us, and how to tell when to keep going.

"With every breath that we take, it's a new moment to start again."

Where to Find Meghan

Instagram:<...

Losing weight often people try everything: every supplement, every workout, every routine. Keeping it off is different. Gina Livy and Odette make the case that what comes next is getting picky about what actually works for you.

In this Mindset Monday conversation, they look at the habits people keep out of "should" rather than results. That includes supplements you never re-evaluated, workouts that drain you, the 10-step bedtime routine and the guilt of a weekend that went fine anyway. Odette explains how narrowing down to a few habits that really help changed her year. Gina looks...

Consistency isn't perfection. Sometimes it's two glasses of water on a chaotic day.

In this live session, Gina Livy explains why you don't need someone to hold you accountable, why all-or-nothing people fall off as hard as they go in, and how non-negotiables can keep you going when motivation doesn't. She also takes on plateaus, weight loss while sick, hormone shifts, and whether lemon water really does anything.

The program stays the same. You're the one who's changed, and that's what this episode is all about.

This podcast aligns with...

Words matter. If "what's wrong with me?" is your first thought when the scale goes up or a workout gets missed, this episode is for you. Gina Livy and Odette dig into how the words you use on yourself shape your mindset, and how small changes in wording can shift everything.

"I skipped my workout" becomes "I chose not to today." "I gained weight" becomes "My scale is up. Why?" "What's wrong with me?" becomes "What's going on with me?" It's the same moment with a completely different story, and the new version leads to curiosity...

Personal trainer Andrew Blakey specializes in resistance training for adults over 40. His first rule for beginners might surprise you: start small.

Gina and Andrew talk about why getting back into exercise feels so hard, why so many people quit after the first sore week, and how the "go hard or go home" fitness culture of the '80s and '90s still shapes what we think a good workout looks like. They also cover joint-friendly strength training, why technique matters more than intensity, and why you work around pain, not through it. Andrew's message for anyone...

Jenn Harper was newly sober and selling seafood when she woke from a dream that became Cheekbone Beauty, now stocked at Sephora. In this conversation with Gina Livy, she names the belief that nearly cost her the business: that she was supposed to figure it out on her own.

Jenn and Gina get into the old stories that block change, what a year of everything-failing actually teaches you, the difference between regret and shame, and the morning routine that keeps Jenn steady.

Her rule for anything worth doing: if you don't give up...

Gina Livy and Odette open week one of maintenance with a claim that sounds backwards: the food is the easy part. Knowing what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat is learnable. What's harder is everything sitting underneath it; the fear of gaining it back, the old habits that feel comforting because they're familiar, and the quiet belief that once you hit your number, the work is finished.

"My diet is over" is the thought that undoes years of progress, this is how fear of regain can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The scale is up two pounds after an almost perfect day. Most people read that as failure. Gina Livy reads it as a sign the weight is about to drop.

Gina breaks down what the scale is actually measuring and why the number climbs right before fat is released. She covers the three signals that weight is on its way down, why weighing once a week tells you almost nothing while weighing daily tells you a lot, and why it's far harder than you think to turn the food you're eating into real fat. Trust the...

You wanted this for so long. So why does getting here feel a little flat?

Clinical psychologist and sleep expert Dr. Beverley David joins Odette to explain why reaching your goal weight can bring a letdown instead of a lift, and why that's a normal human response, not a sign you're failing. She breaks down how anticipation and dopamine carry us through big changes, how hedonic adaptation makes even major wins feel ordinary fast, and why calm can feel strange if you grew up watching the people around you go on and off diets. She also...

You did the hard part. The weight is off. So why does keeping it off still feel like work?

Welcome to the first Midweek Motivation of the season! Gina Livy and Odette talk openly about the slow, uninspired start that can follow weight loss, and why weight maintenance is less about food and more about knowing yourself. They get into where carbs like bread, pasta and rice fit once you're no longer trying to lose, and why an all-or-nothing mindset about them causes more trouble than the foods do. 

This podcast aligns with D...

Most of us don't need more recipes. We need a plan that fits the life we're actually living.

Gina sits down with Eimear Brazil to talk about cooking from scratch without the overwhelm. Eimear is a trained chef from Waterford, Ireland, and the creator of The Kitchen Shift. She's worked as a head chef, an operations chef and a food stylist, and she shares the simple systems she uses at home to eat well, waste less and spend less on groceries. She also explains why she doesn't meal prep, why flashy packaging and prime shelf space...

Everyone is telling you to eat more protein. Almost nobody is telling you how much you actually need or why the number you keep reading online was never written for your body.

Gina Livy breaks down the protein conversation that's taken over midlife weight loss: where the 20-to-30-gram rule really came from, what protein has to do with protecting muscle through perimenopause and menopause, why the GLP-1 boom changed the whole conversation, and why chewing your food beats drinking it. 

This podcast aligns with Day 2 of our Fall Program, members can find v...

Most people treat goal weight like a finish line. Gina Livy and Odette explain why it's actually the start of a different job, and why so many people regain. They break down the three reasons weight comes back and why the "why" that got you through weight loss isn't the same as what helps you to maintain.

Welcome to Day 1 of our Fall Maintenance and Mindfulness Group!

This podcast aligns with Day 1 of our Fall Maintenance Program, members can find video in our Livy Method app or Maintenance and Mindfulness Group: https://www...

Eating less and exercising more works. That's the problem.

You force your body to burn fat because there isn't enough fuel coming in and in doing that, you teach it that it needed the fat in the first place. Then it comes back, and somewhere along the way you decided that was a discipline problem.

Welcome to the first live of the Fall! Today Gina Livy breaks down the difference between weight loss and fat loss, why calorie math falls apart for women in perimenopause and menopause, and the three reasons weight comes...

You can eat in a calorie deficit and still not lose weight. If your sleep is wrecked, your stress has been chronic for years and you've quietly lost muscle, the deficit isn't fixing what's underneath it all.

Gina Livy brings five experts to the table to cut through the noise on hormones, sleep, stress and weight loss: Dr. Olinca Trejo on why insulin resistance is a symptom and not a diagnosis, Dr. Paul Hrkal on rebuilding trust with a body you've stopped believing in, clinical psychologist Dr. Beverley David on replacing judgment with curiosity, sleep and...

Food is not the enemy. Baking is not the enemy. Our relationship with food is usually the problem.

Colin Asuncion, Great Canadian Baking Show finalist and judge on the new Halloween Bakeshop, joins Gina for an honest conversation about baking without the guilt. His advice for anyone who loves to bake but doesn't want to eat the whole tray: make the batch, have one, give the rest away. They also cover the ingredient swaps that genuinely work and the ones that ruin a bake, why almond-flour desserts beat most gluten-free flour substitutes, how to freeze baked goods...

You keep meaning to deal with it. The closet, the freezer, the room you close the door on. And you keep not doing it, then wondering what's wrong with you.

Professional organizer and certified KonMari consultant Effy Terry joins Gina to talk about why nothing is wrong with you, why clutter in midlife is really just catch-up, and why the clothes in the back of your closet are keeping you stuck at a size and a stage you've already left. They get into aspirational buying, sunken cost, body doubling, sharing a home with someone whose system isn't...

Food is one of the last places culture still lives. It's how your family said I love you, how traditions crossed oceans, how a recipe outlived the person who wrote it down. Gina sits down with Capri Cafaro, radio host, TV personality, creator of the Emmy-nominated PBS series America the Bountiful and author of United We Eat, who has spent years travelling North America collecting the stories behind what people grow, make and pass down. Why food is the strongest keeper of cultural memory we have. What Indigenous food sovereignty teaches everyone about eating well. Why knowing who grew...

If the weight crept back on this summer, nothing is broken, your routine changed, and your body followed.

Gina unpacks why weight regain after 40 has less to do with willpower than with the things that quietly shifted: longer days, later dinners, less water, less sleep and old habits that never fully left. She gets into set point range and why your weight was always meant to move within a 5–10 pound window, why "A-type" people crush weight loss and then struggle in maintenance, and what food noise actually is, including what GLP-1 medications do to it and wh...

You look like you have it all together. Inside, you're wondering how much longer you can keep this up.

Mental health professional, award-winning speaker and author Calissa Ngozi joins Gina to talk about burnout in midlife and why exhaustion became a badge of honour, why rest comes wrapped in guilt, and why so many women only recognize burnout in everyone else.

One thing you can change today: give yourself permission to pause.

Because you can't take care of anyone else if you're not taking care of yourself.

Where to...

From your first period to well past menopause, it's the same set of ovaries calling the shots, and almost no one ever explained what they're actually doing.

Gina sits down with Dr. Sony Sierra, one of Canada's leading fertility specialists, for the conversation you can't get in a ten-minute appointment. Why "just lose weight" was never the real answer. What twenty years of losing and regaining does to your hormones. Why the way you lose weight matters more than the number. And why the hardest part of menopause is that nobody warned you. They also talk the...

Have you ever heard your own voice climb an octave mid-sentence and wondered who that was? Voice coach, musician and author Lucy Walsh joins Gina to explain why you sound different depending on who's in the room and why it's a survival tactic you learned a long time ago. They get into hiding in plain sight, why overcompensating to fill an awkward silence is a way of abandoning yourself, what comes up when you finally stop shallow breathing and drop into your body, and why "releasing" the old versions of you doesn't work.

Gina opens solo on...

You're doing all the things, the water, the greens, the protein, the walking, the sleep, and the scale hasn't moved in months. Gina opens with a message from a woman who's been stuck in the same five-pound range since February and asks the question most women in midlife are afraid to say out loud: what if something is wrong with me?

The answer: nothing is wrong with you. The plan that worked two years ago isn't the plan your body needs today. She unpacks why weight loss stalls in perimenopause and menopause, how hormones, sleep and stress...

Gina sits down with Livy Community member Megan Mapley for an open conversation about sustainable weight loss, mindset, emotional eating and what it really takes to create lasting change. After losing 53 pounds, regaining weight when life got busy and finding her way forward again, Megan shares why she stopped chasing the all-or-nothing approach and started building habits she could actually live with. They talk about food noise, social media, movement, body image, GLP-1 weight loss medications and the difference between needing a reset and believing you have to start over. It’s a relatable reminder that weight loss isn’t ab...

Gina Livy sits down with RevolutionHER founder and CEO Maria Locker for a candid conversation about women supporting women, the power of community and what it looks like to rediscover yourself as life changes. From body image, clothing and people-pleasing to entrepreneurship, self-care and Maria’s own Livy Method weight loss journey, they explore why feeling good in your skin is about so much more than the number on the scale. Maria also shares how learning to listen to her body has changed her approach to health, while she and Gina chat about supporting women-led Canadian businesses, finding confidence in...

Fresh off a family vacation in Paris, Tuscany and Rome, Gina Livy gets real about what it actually means to get Back On Track after summer travel, indulgences and time away from routine. She shares why sustainable weight loss and maintenance are about so much more than food, exploring hydration, mindful eating, sleep, stress, movement, nervous system regulation and the everyday factors that affect how the body feels and responds. Gina also reframes “mindless” summer eating, talks through normal weight fluctuations and set point range, and reminds the Livy Community that enjoying life and staying focused on their goals don’...

The vacation's over, the "summer shoulds" are creeping in. Clinical psychologist Dr. Beverley David joins Odette to explain the actual psychology behind the end-of-summer slump and what to do about it. She shares why chasing the "best summer ever" backfires, how to make ordinary moments stick by truly noticing and savoring them, and her simple three-step tool for the post-holiday blues. Here is a practical conversation about softening the "September scaries".

Where to Find Dr. Beverley:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdrbeverley/

Website: https://www.yourpsychologycentre.ca/

If you are...