Food Junkies Podcast

📢 A quick announcement from the Food Junkies team: For the first time, we're moving to a new release schedule — new episodes every other week, still featuring one Recovery Story each month. We'll share more about this decision in our next Clinician's Corner. Whether you've been with us from the beginning or just found us, thank you. This is also the perfect time to dive into our archive of hundre...

In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with world-renowned nephrologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Jason Fung to explore one of the most pressing questions in the food addiction community: Is fasting safe for the food addict? Dr. Fung's latest book, The Hunger Code: Resetting Your Body's Fat Thermostat in the Age of Ultra-Processed Food , challenges the calorie-cent...

CJ is joined today by Keren, a vibrant young woman whose passion for recovery and love of life shine through in everything she does. With an infectious enthusiasm and deep gratitude for her journey, Keren is dedicated to sharing her experience, strength, and hope with others who may be struggling. Her commitment to helping people has even inspired her to launch her own YouTube channel, where she o...

What if the voice urging you to binge isn't really you — and you could learn to talk back to it? This week, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Glenn Livingston, whose unconventional path from Fortune 500 food industry consultant to food compulsion researcher led him to develop one of the most distinctive frameworks in recovery: Never Binge Again . Glenn shares h...

Your eyes might be revealing metabolic disease long before your doctor catches it in bloodwork — and most people have no idea. In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Radka Toms, ophthalmologist, functional medicine practitioner, and founder of My Sugar Stop, to explore the fascinating and largely unknown connection between sugar, gut health, and your vision. Dr. Toms shares her own st...

In this episode of Clinician's Corner, Molly and Clarissa get real about one of the most pervasive and painful barriers in recovery from ultra-processed food use disorder: shame and stigma. Fresh off facilitating two back-to-back retreats (with Vera joining both!), they bring the depth of those in-person conversations directly to you. This is the kind of episode that meets you where you are — no t...

What do you do when your child will only eat three foods — and none of them are vegetables? For Natalie Peltro, certified nutritional therapist and lifestyle medicine expert, that was her reality. Her son was diagnosed with severe nonverbal autism at 18 months, and the journey to help him heal through food became the foundation of her entire career. In this episode, Natalie shares the framework sh...

What if the most powerful tool for mental health recovery  isn't  a medication —  it's  your metabolism?   Dr. Erin Louise Bellamy joins Dr. Vera Tarman for a deep dive into ketogenic metabolic therapy: what it is, how it works, and why it may be one of the most underutilized interventions in both psychiatric care and food addiction recovery.   Dr. Bellamy is a chartered psychologist, CEO of IKRT...

CJ  is joined today by  Peggy , whose story is as raw as it is relatable. From the age of six,  Peggy  began navigating a complicated relationship with food that would follow her into adulthood. She shares candidly about tying her worth to always having a boyfriend, and the deep need for validation that drove those choices. While she was able to walk away from cigarettes with ease, food proved to...

What if the missing piece in your recovery  isn't  more willpower —  it's  resilience? In this deeply inspiring episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Stephen Sideroff, UCLA psychologist, researcher, and one of the world's leading experts on stress, addiction, and  optimal  performance. With over 40 years at the intersection of neuroscience and recovery, Dr.  Sideroff  breaks down his compreh...

What if your body could warn you before a relapse happens? In this fascinating episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Bob Messerschmidt — biomedical engineer, inventor, and one of the architects behind the original Apple Watch's health-sensing technology — to explore a surprisingly simple but powerful biomarker: the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Bob is the founder of Core Health and has d...

Are you exhausted from chasing motivation that never lasts? In this Clinician's Corner episode, Molly  Painschab  and Clarissa Kennedy break down why motivation is  actually an   outcome , not a starting point — and what truly drives sustainable recovery from ultra-processed food use disorder.   Using the lens of  Self-Determination Theory (SDT) , they unpack the three psychological needs every pe...

CJ  welcomes  Heather  to the podcast, a guest whose bright, charismatic energy lights up the conversation from the start.  Heather  is exceptionally open and instantly warming, sharing her journey with honesty and heart. She speaks candidly about living with diabetes, her long battle with sugar and ultra-processed food addiction, and the moment everything changed ,   when she realized she wanted...

What does recovery look like — and how do we measure it? In this episode, we're joined by Dr. John Kelly, one of the world's leading addiction researchers and founder of the Recovery Research Institute at Harvard Medical School, for a deep dive into the science behind what makes recovery possible, sustainable, and real. Dr. Kelly breaks down the difference between remission and recovery, shares wh...

What if the key to understanding your relationship with food isn't willpower — it's neuroscience? In this fascinating episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Rachel Herz, neuroscientist, leading expert on the psychology of smell, and author of Why You Eat What You Eat and That's Disgusting . From the evolutionary roots of disgust to why ultra-processed foods bypass our natural aversion respons...

Are you highly sensitive — and secretly using food to manage a world that feels like too much? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Esther Kane, MSW, a British Columbia-based psychotherapist with nearly 30 years of experience helping highly sensitive people (HSPs) break free from emotional eating and food addiction. Esther isn't just a clinician — she's an HSP herself who nearly died fr...

Life doesn't pause for recovery — and right now, life is a lot . In this Clinician's Corner episode, co-hosts Molly Painschab and Clarissa Kennedy sit down for an honest, grounded conversation about what it looks like to stay connected to your recovery when the world feels like it's on fire and your personal life is a lot at the same time. This isn't a pep talk. These are two clinicians talking re...

What does it take to turn personal pain into policy change? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Chérie St. Arnauld, Executive Director of Metabolic Revolution and a passionate advocate for metabolic health, to explore the power of grassroots mobilization in the fight against ultra-processed foods. Chérie grew up in a household shaped by economic constraints and ultra-processed food. It...

CJ has the privilege of sitting down with Kristy today. Today, I'm honored to introduce Kristy, a devoted homeschooling mom whose life is a powerful testimony of resilience, strength, and hope. Kristy once believed her struggles were simply about weight and exercise, never realizing she was battling food addiction. Through faith, courage, and deep self-discovery, she came to understand the root of...

What's really happening inside your child's body when they eat ultra-processed food? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Jacob May — mitochondrial researcher, registered dietitian, and Associate Professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center — to explore the cellular and metabolic consequences of a diet dominated by ultra-processed foods, particularly in children. Dr. May leads...

Are you working hard, caring deeply, and still feeling like it's not enough? You're not alone, and this episode is for you. This week, Molly and Clarissa sit down with Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, clinical psychologist, core faculty at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University, and author of How to Be Enough and How to Be Yourself . Ellen brings warmth, science, and radical compas...

Have you ever left a session feeling smaller than when you walked in? In this episode of Food Junkies: Clinician's Corner , Clarissa and Molly explore one of the most important — and least talked about — dynamics in eating disorder, food addiction, and substance use treatment: what happens when the clinician's model gets in the way of the client's healing. 🔑 What We Cover in This Episode: ⬡ The R...

Can you eat plant-based and still avoid sugar, carbs, and ultra-processed foods? In this episode of Food Junkies, Dr. Vera Tarman is joined by Adina Mullen, plant-based chef, author of Vegan Flavors of the World , and founder of Adina's Delicacies, to explore whether vegetarian or vegan eating can truly support food addiction recovery, low-sugar living, and even plant-based keto—without deprivatio...

In this powerful episode of Food Junkies , we're joined by Amber Romaniuk , emotional eating and digestive health expert, to unpack the real drivers behind binge eating, food addiction, and the relentless restrict–overeat cycle. Amber shares her personal recovery journey from binge eating, bulimia, and food addiction—and explains why lasting healing requires more than another diet or food plan. To...

Is there a built-in "fat switch" in our genes—something nature designed to help us store fat for survival? And if so, what does that mean for food addicts living in a world saturated with ultra-processed food? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Richard Johnson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado, former Chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension, author...