Food Junkies Podcast

Why do we keep reaching for food we don't even want? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman talks with Dr. Thomas Sambrook, lecturer in psychology at the University of East Anglia, about his research on how the brain responds to food cues within milliseconds, and why that response can keep firing long after we're full.

Dr. Sambrook holds two PhDs, one in primatology from the University of St Andrews and one in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Plymouth. His work uses computational modeling and brain-tracking methods to study how we learn habits, make decisions, and respond to reward and punishment, most recently with a focus on primary reinforcers like food and pain.

In his latest study, hungry participants learned to work for two foods, one sweet and one savory. Halfway through, they ate their fill of just one. They said they no longer wanted that food, but their brains still produced the same strong reward signal when they saw a cue for it. What we consciously want and what the brain does when it sees a cue can be two very different things.

For anyone who has said "I don't even want this, so why am I eating it?", this conversation offers a clear, shame-free explanation rooted in biology.

In this episode, we explore:

• Dr. Sambrook's path from primatology to studying reward, habit, and food
• What makes a behavior a habit, and where habit ends and addiction begins
• Devaluation insensitivity, and why it may explain eating in the absence of hunger
• The brain's reward signal firing just as strongly for a food you're full of as for one you still want
• Why a cue can be as rewarding as the food itself, and the evolutionary reasons for that
• Whether advertising and cues could override the "food noise" reduction from GLP-1 medications
• Why fast, cue-driven responses beat slow, deliberate decisions
• Incubation of craving, and why it may be a separate route from cue-driven behavior
• Individual differences in cue reactivity, including possible links to ADHD
• Why willpower-based "keep it in the cupboard and just resist" approaches tend to fail
• Policy parallels with tobacco: limiting the advertising and visibility of ultra-processed foods

Key takeaways:

• You can't control the brain's first response to a cue. That response is automatic and inherited from millions of years of evolution. It is not a character flaw.
• Practice cue hygiene. Remove trigger foods from your environment and limit exposure where you can. In recovery language, this is people, places, and things.
• Replace the habit; don't just fight it. When a cue hits, redirect the action. Keep a satisfying, healthy alternative within reach, such as an orange that keeps your hands busy.
• Eat without multitasking. Eating while distracted trains automatic eating. When you eat, just eat.
• Let go of the shame. Watching yourself eat something you don't want is the old reward machinery at work, not a personal failing.

🔗 Connect with Dr. Sambrook: Thomas Sambrook - University of East Anglia

🔗 Connect with the Food Junkies Podcast:

Find us on Apple Music, Spotify, and any other platform where you listen to podcasts.

✉️Email us: [email protected]

💜 Looking for support with sugar and ultra-processed food addiction?

Sweet Sobriety offers live recovery groups, coaching, and the Foundations Program:

Sweet Sobriety: Foundations PREVIEW - https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-foundations-course-preview

Sweet Sobriety: Foundations – https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-foundations

Sweet Sobriety: Liberation PREVIEW - https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-liberation-preview

Sweet Sobriety: Liberation - https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-liberation

Hosts: Dr. Vera Tarman, Clarissa Kennedy & Molly Painschab

⚠️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, addiction, or trauma, please reach out to a qualified healthcare provider. Content includes discussion of sexual assault, bullying, and disordered eating. Viewer discretion is advised.

What if your cravings aren't the problem, but a message?

In this episode of the Food Junkies Podcast, we sit down with Luis Mojica, somatic practitioner, nutritionist, and founder of Holistic Life Navigation, to explore how food, trauma, and the nervous system are deeply connected.

Luis shares his powerful personal story: growing up intersex, surviving bullying and sexual assault in silence, and turning to food as his only "witness" during 20+ years of binge eating. He describes how a $20 guitar became his first somatic experience, and how that moment sparked a lifelong path into psychology, nutrition, and Somatic Experiencing.

We talk about his framework of stimulants, depressants, and balancers, a way of understanding food by how it changes your state rather than whether it's "good" or "bad." We also explore why people in recovery often shift to overeating whole foods, and why shame may be harder to metabolize than any food on the planet.

🎧 In this episode, we discuss:

- How unresolved trauma and a dysregulated nervous system can drive food addiction

- Why addiction is an attempt to find safety outside of yourself

- Stimulants, depressants, and balancers: what they are and how to spot yours

- "Volume eating" of whole foods and why it can still be a survival response

- How restrictive eating can be a way to escape the body

- Why a calm, open body can feel unsafe at first, and how to titrate safety

- Conscious choice vs. compulsion: where pleasure fits in recovery

- The biology of shame and why it fuels the craving cycle

- Active pendulation: a one-minute nervous system practice you can do anywhere

- The "roots of your cravings" practice: a gentle way to meet the need beneath the urge

- Why food may be the most overlooked tool for nervous system regulation

🔗 Connect with Luis Mojica:

Website: https://holisticlifenavigation.com

🔗 Connect with the Food Junkies Podcast:

Find us on Apple Music, Spotify, and any other platform where you listen to podcasts.

✉️Email us: [email protected]

💜 Looking for support with sugar and ultra-processed food addiction?

Sweet Sobriety offers live recovery groups, coaching, and the Foundations Program:

Sweet Sobriety: Foundations – https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-foundations

Sweet Sobriety: Liberation - https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-liberation

Hosts: Dr. Vera Tarman, Clarissa Kennedy & Molly Painschab

⚠️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, addiction, or trauma, please reach out to a qualified healthcare provider. Content includes discussion of sexual assault, bullying, and disordered eating. Viewer discretion is advised.

#FoodAddiction #FoodJunkiesPodcast #SomaticHealing #NervousSystemRegulation #FoodAddictionRecovery #UPFUD #TraumaHealing #BingeEating #EmotionalEating #HolisticLifeNavigation

Felicia joined CJ today for an incredibly open and honest conversation about recovery, resilience, and the complicated role food played throughout her life. Her story is heartbreaking at times, but it is also filled with strength, perseverance, and hope. For years, food remained intertwined with the recovery she was searching for, keeping her from experiencing the freedom she truly wanted. Felicia shares how she kept moving forward, continued learning, and discovered new ways to care for herself. The contrast between the life she once lived and the energetic, hopeful life she lives today makes her story deeply compelling and inspiring.

If you're considering personalized assistance, CJ, a Certified Addiction Professional specializing in Food Addiction, is here for one-on-one coaching. Reach out to CJ at [email protected]

Interested in sharing your recovery story on our show? We'd love to hear from you! Please email [email protected] 1

Molly and Clarissa sit down for another Clinician's Corner to dig into shadow work — what Carl Jung meant by it, why it's not just a "woo-woo" concept, and why it belongs in food addiction recovery. They talk about the parts of ourselves we learn to hide (anger, desire, ambition, even joy), how those exiled parts often drive the very behaviors we're trying to recover from, and how projection, envy, and even compliments can point us straight to what we've buried. This episode previews the Shadow Work module inside Liberation, Sweet Sobriety's brand-new 10-module program launching this fall.

WHAT WE COVER

• Why Molly built a shadow work module into Liberation, and how it connects to the Shame module covered in a previous episode
• Carl Jung's quote — "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate" and what it means in practice
• The iceberg metaphor: the curated 10% we show the world vs. the 90% underneath driving our behavior
• Where the shadow comes from (genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger) and why this isn't about blaming parents
• How substance use, food behaviors, and other compulsive patterns often exist to manage and suppress shadow parts
• Recovery work doesn't make the shadow disappear — and why it can get louder, becoming a high-risk time for return to use
• Projection: how "accusations are often confessions," and why the people who irritate us most can be mirrors
• The Golden Shadow — the positive traits (confidence, joy, ambition) we also learn to suppress or deny
• Why receiving compliments can feel unbearable, and what that has to do with shadow work
• Envy and jealousy reframed as information rather than something shameful
• Individuation and integration — Jung's idea that the goal isn't to eliminate these parts, but to become a whole person who can hold all of them
• How return to use fits into this: not a moral failure, but sometimes a shadow part that hasn't been integrated
• A personal moment on privilege, shame, and how rejecting a part of ourselves can limit our ability to help others
• What to expect from the Shadow Work module inside Liberation

LIBERATION — SWEET SOBRIETY'S NEW PROGRAM

Liberation is the next step after Foundations — a deeper 10-module program covering shadow work, shame, anger, guilt, the inner critic, ADHD and the nervous system, trauma, highly sensitive people, and more. You do not need to have completed Foundations first.

Modules release the week of September 21. Live sessions begin October 15 at 1:00–2:30 PM Eastern. Starting price: $400 USD for this first round (early participants help shape the program, same as the first Foundations cohort)

Learn more and join us: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-liberation

RESOURCES & LINKS

Catch our earlier episode on Shame: https://open.spotify.com/episode/44sTxYKeVv7r01wtSKkYtm?si=7557f537d5314ebd

Sweet Sobriety Foundations Program: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/sweet-sobriety-foundations

Sweet Sobriety website: https://www.sweetsobriety.ca/

Have a topic you want us to cover? Email us: [email protected]

POLAND 2027: https://fundacjabraciarodzen.pl/products/international-advanced-training-programme?variant=56860764078458

ABOUT FOOD JUNKIES PODCAST

Food Junkies is hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Clarissa Kennedy, and Molly Painschab, exploring food addiction, ultra-processed food use disorder, and recovery from a clinical, compassionate, and lived-experience perspective.

Subscribe for new episodes and hit the bell so you don't miss our Clinician's Corner series.

Our show is for educational purposes only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

Why do older women show the highest rates of food addiction, while older men are more likely to meet criteria for alcohol and tobacco use disorder — and why does that gap flip when it comes to weight? In Episode 292, we sit down with Lucy Loch, a doctoral candidate in Psychology at the University of Michigan, to unpack her research on food addiction in older adults and what it reveals about decades of diet culture, marketing, and an under-screened generation.

Lucy studies the life course development of addictive-like eating — how early-life experiences and exposure to ultra-processed foods shape appetite, self-regulation, and long-term health outcomes. She's supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, works under Dr. Ashley Gearhardt at the University of Michigan, and her research has appeared in Addiction, Current Obesity Reports, and Physiology & Behavior.

In this conversation, we dig into her recent study from the National Poll on Healthy Aging: why older women meet criteria for food addiction at higher rates than older men, why overweight men in the study were 19x more likely to meet criteria (compared to 11x for women), what a small but striking finding on underweight older adults might mean, and why isolation and food addiction may feed each other in a bidirectional loop. We also talk about why food addiction is so often invisible in geriatric medicine, what it would take to get it screened for the way depression and falls already are, and what decades of "low-fat," heavily marketed diet products may have set up for the women who trusted them.

This one is for anyone who works with older adults, anyone who's ever been told "just eat healthier," and anyone who's still unlearning the idea that this comes down to willpower.

About our guest:

Lucy Loch is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the life course development of addictive-like eating, examining how early life experiences and exposure to ultra-processed foods influence appetite, self-regulation, and risk for later-life health outcomes. She is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and works to uncover why certain foods and life experiences may make some individuals more susceptible to overeating. Her work has appeared in journals including Addiction, Current Obesity Reports, and Physiology & Behavior.

POLAND 2027: https://fundacjabraciarodzen.pl/products/international-advanced-training-programme?variant=56860764078458

Connect With Us

• Subscribe to Food Junkies Podcast for new episodes
• Email us at [email protected]

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

In this episode, CJ sits down with April for a thoughtful, reflective conversation about recovery. April brings a quiet intentionality to the way she understands healing, growth, and the ongoing work of becoming. Her perspective is introspective, honest, and at times existential, inviting us to slow down and consider what recovery truly asks of us. This conversation has a different rhythm—less about quick answers and more about meaningful questions, self-awareness, and the space between where we have been and who we are becoming. April's calm presence reminds us that recovery can be both deeply personal and profoundly transformative.

If you're considering personalized assistance, CJ, a Certified Addiction Professional specializing in Food Addiction, is here for one-on-one coaching. Reach out to CJ at [email protected]

Interested in sharing your recovery story on our show? We'd love to hear from you! Please email [email protected]

Can changing what you eat treat depression, anxiety, and even psychosis more effectively than medication alone? In this episode of Food Junkies, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Matt Bernstein, MD, psychiatrist and CEO of Accord, to unpack the emerging field of metabolic psychiatry — and what it means for people recovering from food addiction.

Dr. Bernstein trained at Columbia, Penn, and the MGH-McLean Psychiatry Program before shifting from traditional hospital-based psychiatric care toward lifestyle-based interventions: nutrition, sleep, light, and movement. He now serves on the advisory board of Metabolic Mind and helped organize the first public conference on metabolic psychiatry in 2023.

In this conversation, Dr. Bernstein and Dr. Tarman explore how brain energy metabolism — not just neurotransmitters — may be a root driver of conditions like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's, and why ketogenic and low-carbohydrate approaches are showing early but compelling results for food cravings, food noise, and psychiatric symptom relief.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why Dr. Bernstein moved away from conventional psychiatric medication models toward metabolic approaches
• How brain insulin resistance can contribute to depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia
• The role of mitochondria, oxidative stress, and the gut-brain axis in mental illness
• How ketones act as an alternative brain fuel — and why that matters for insulin-resistant neurons
• The connection between brain insulin resistance and Alzheimer's risk decades before symptoms appear
• How ketogenic and low-carb diets naturally reduce food cravings and "food noise" for people with food addiction
• What a day in the Accord immersive metabolic psychiatry program actually looks like
• Why combining diet, exercise, circadian rhythm alignment, and mind-body practices produces faster results than any single intervention alone
• How GLP-1 medications compare to ketogenic diets for reducing food noise and cravings — and where each may fall short
• The risks of rapid or unsupported psychiatric medication tapering, and why "hyperbolic tapering" matters
• What to watch for (and troubleshoot) if a ketogenic diet isn't producing results after several weeks

Guest

Dr. Matt Bernstein, MD is a psychiatrist and CEO of Accord, an immersive metabolic psychiatry program near Boston. He is a leading voice in metabolic psychiatry, sits on the advisory board of Metabolic Mind, and helped organize the first public conference dedicated to the field in 2023.

Connect with Dr. Matt Bernstein & Accord

Website: https://accordmh.com/

Releasing What's Not Ours: Healing Food & Body Struggles Through IFS with Vanessa Kredler

👉Learn more here: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/releasing-whats-not-ours

Connect with Food Junkies

• 🎧 Subscribe for new episodes
• 🌐 Learn more about food addiction recovery at https://www.sweetsobriety.ca/
• 📩 Have a guest suggestion or topic request? Send it our way: [email protected]

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

Fatigue. Brain fog. Cravings that never quit no matter how "good" you're eating. In this episode of Food Junkies, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Carolyn Dean — MD, naturopath, and author of more than 50 books including The Magnesium Miracle — to unpack a piece of the addiction and recovery puzzle that rarely gets airtime: magnesium deficiency and its tangled relationship with yeast overgrowth, sugar metabolism, and chronic cravings.

Dr. Dean has spent over five decades in integrative and functional medicine, and in this conversation she lays out her theory that a huge share of chronic symptoms — anxiety, insomnia, heart palpitations, muscle tension, even conditions mistaken for neurological disease — trace back to a mineral most conventional labs never test properly. She also digs into candida overgrowth, why restrictive diets like keto and carnivore may be working for reasons people don't realize, and why sugar cravings might be your gut asking for something other than sugar.

This episode isn't a replacement for individualized medical or clinical treatment, and it isn't an endorsement of any product mentioned. As always, we encourage listeners to bring these questions to their own care team.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why magnesium is required to produce ATP — the energy currency of every cell — and what happens when your body can't get enough
• The difference between a magnesium compound and a bioavailable magnesium ion, and why so many supplements underdeliver
• How soil depletion and modern agriculture have quietly lowered magnesium in the food supply over the past century
• The link Dr. Dean draws between candida/yeast overgrowth, leaky gut, and persistent sugar cravings
• Why she believes some people on restrictive diets (keto, carnivore, paleo) may be managing yeast overgrowth without realizing it
• The connection between sugar metabolism, vitamin C, and cardiovascular health
• Her recommended starting point for anyone wanting to address deficiency: diet, timing, and sequencing of supplementation

About Our Guest

Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND is a physician and naturopath with over 50 years of experience in integrative and functional medicine. A graduate of Dalhousie University's medical school, she is the author of more than 50 books, including The Magnesium Miracle, Detox Your Body, and multiple works on sugar toxicity and mineral deficiency. Her clinical focus centers on magnesium, mineral absorption, and yeast overgrowth as root contributors to chronic fatigue, cravings, and metabolic dysfunction.

Learn more: drcarolyndean.com

Her product site: rnareset.com

About Vanessa Kredler's Upcoming IFS Workshop:

Not every struggle with food and body belongs to you. Some of it was handed down — a mother's dieting, a culture's obsession with thinness, a family that never said "I love you" out loud but said "eat" instead.

In this 3-part live series, clinical counsellor Vanessa Kredler — a PACFA-registered therapist, certified food addiction professional (INFACT), and Level 2-trained IFS practitioner — draws on her work in addiction, complex trauma, and intergenerational trauma to help you untangle what's actually yours from what you inherited.

Using Internal Family Systems, you'll learn to recognize the legacy and cultural burdens shaping your relationship with food, understand why parts of you hold onto them, and take part in a guided practice to begin letting them go — with the same compassionate, trauma-informed approach Vanessa brings to her own clinical work (and, as she'll tell you, her own recovered life).

About Food Junkies

Food Junkies is a podcast about food addiction, hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Clarissa Kennedy, and Molly Painschab — clinicians, researchers, and advocates working to bring visibility, science, and community support to ultra-processed food use disorder (UPFUD). New episodes feature conversations with leading researchers, clinicians, and people in recovery.

Subscribe for new episodes, and find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

In this episode of Food Junkies, Dr. Vera Tarman and Clarissa Kennedy sit down with Brian Baumal, a registered psychotherapist based in Toronto and owner of Aliva Psychotherapy, where he specializes in weight management, eating disorders, food addiction, and psychological support for bariatric surgery patients. Brian trained at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto and has been a licensed member of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario since 2015. He's also a food addict in long-term recovery, having lost 100 pounds and kept it off for over 14 years.

Brian shares the moment that changed his understanding of food addiction forever — an intense, addictive reaction to a piece of chocolate at a holiday party that made him realize this was on an entirely different scale than an ordinary craving. From there, the conversation dives deep into perfectionism: how shame and diet culture create an idealized, unrealistic self-image; the difference between adaptive perfectionism (using structure and tools in service of recovery) and toxic or maladaptive perfectionism (an all-or-nothing mindset that treats any slip as total failure); and how perfectionism can quietly become a "runaway train," redirecting obsessive focus from food onto weight, exercise, or other behaviors.

Brian also explains how he uses a Gestalt therapy lens — treating what shows up in the room between therapist and client as the material for the work itself — to help clients build individualized, flexible recovery plans instead of rigid, punishment-driven rules. The group discusses distinguishing an addictive relapse from a psychological or shame-based slip, the role of relapse plans and "gathering data" after a slip, and why using tools (scales, timers, structure) isn't a sign of weakness but a sustainable part of long-term recovery.

The episode closes with Brian's reflections on chairing the Sugar and Food Addiction Professionals Network, a free Facebook community of nearly 200 food addiction professionals offering training, research updates, and access to leading voices in the field.

Topics Covered

• Brian's personal food addiction story and his "aha moment" with chocolate at a holiday party
• What Gestalt therapy is and how it approaches defense mechanisms relationally
• How shame and diet culture create unrealistic, idealized self-images
• Adaptive vs. maladaptive (toxic) perfectionism in recovery
• Perfectionism as a "runaway train" — when focus shifts from food to weight, exercise, or other behaviors
• Distinguishing an addictive relapse from a shame-driven psychological slip
• Building individualized, flexible abstinence and relapse plans
• Using tools (scales, timers, structure) without turning them into self-punishment
• Vulnerability factors: trauma, family food dynamics, anxious or over-controlled personality styles
• Adaptive perfectionism as flexibility, not the absence of high standards
• The Sugar and Food Addiction Professionals Network on Facebook

Connect with Brian Baumal

• Website: Aliva Psychotherapy — https://alivapsychotherapy.com/

WORKSHOP LINKS:

🚨Curious why cravings hit harder some days than others? Viktoria Hamma's two-part Circadian Rhythms & Red Light Therapy workshop breaks down the biology behind your body's internal clock and shows you exactly how morning light, meal timing, and red light therapy can work with your recovery instead of against it.

Grab your spot for Part 1: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/circadian-rhythm-and-red-light-therapy-educations

And Part 2: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/circadian-rhythms-red-light-therapy-part-2-understanding-your-body-s-internal-clock

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

CJ welcomes Lara, a former professional soccer player from Iceland, for a powerful and deeply honest conversation about food addiction and recovery. Lara began struggling with food at a very young age and recognized early that it was beginning to take over her life, even while competing as an elite athlete. She speaks with remarkable transparency about her experiences, their impact on her, and the path she has taken toward healing. Lara's willingness to share is so profound that she even wrote a book about her journey. CJ found her story fascinating and truly loved talking with her.

If you're considering personalized assistance, CJ, a Certified Addiction Professional specializing in Food Addiction, is here for one-on-one coaching. Reach out to CJ at [email protected]

Interested in sharing your recovery story on our show? We'd love to hear from you! Please email [email protected]