Dr. Vera Tarman – Author, Speaker & Food Addiction Expert

Sugarfree for Life Support Group
I’m Sweet Enough Challenge!

Food Junkies Podcast Ep. 109: Julia Ross (Part 2)

Julia Ross

Julia Ross is the Director of The Craving Cure Virtual Clinic and The NeuroNutrient Therapy Institute based in Mill Valley, California. She is the author of The Diet Cure, The Mood Cure, and The Craving Cure; she has been the subject of many articles in publications from Vogue Magazine to The Journal of Molecular Psychiatry. Her articles have been published in the Journal of the American Psychological Association, Counselor Magazine, Practical Pain Management, and the Townsend Letter elsewhere. She has frequently appeared as an expert on radio, television, and the internet: An NBC special on The Mood Cure’s approach to depression was aired several times throughout the U.S., and a CBN special on how amino acid therapies eliminate food cravings generated 50,000 calls to the producers.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE:

  • Julia shares her Personal/Professional Journey to amino acid/nutritional therapy
  • How addiction treatment was different in the 70s & 80s compared to today?
  • How “frequent junk food assaults” can create “trauma” in the brain
  • The link between stress and cravings
  • The number one cause of carbohydrate cravings
  • More specifics about the protocols for amino acids
  • What medications to be mindful of with amino acid therapy
  • Does this intervention work for eating disorders as well

Food Junkies Podcast Ep. 108: Julia Ross (Part 1)

Julia Ross

Julia Ross is the author of The Diet Cure, The Mood Cure, and The Craving Cure; she has been the subject of many articles in publications from Vogue Magazine to The Journal of Molecular Psychiatry. Her own articles have been published in Counselor Magazine, the Journal of the American Psychological Association, the Townsend Letter, Practical Pain Management, and elsewhere. She has frequently appeared as an expert on radio, television, and the internet: An NBC special on The Mood Cure’s approach to depression was aired several times throughout the U.S., and a CBN special on how amino acid therapies eliminate food cravings generated 50,000 calls to the producers. Julia is now the Director of The Craving Cure Virtual Clinic and The NeuroNutrient Therapy Institute based in Mill Valley, California.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE:

Julia describes how all her years of work came together and she introduces the concept of craving types and the amino acids that she has tested clinically to help thousands of people reduce and eliminate them with some simple supplementation.

Esther Kane and Dr Vera Tarman Discuss Food Addiction and Eating Disorders

Compassionate Conversations with
Esther Kane and Dr Vera Tarman

Join me with Esther Kane on Compassionate Conversations Esther interviews me on a snowy January in Canada, where we discuss highly sensitive people, eating disorders, and of course, food addiction.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE:

0:00 Compassionate Conversations Intro
0:24 Body Image Series Intro
2:44 Introducing Vera Tarman
4:15 Vera’s personal struggle with food addiction
20:20 Differences between “food addiction” and “eating disorders”
16:45 How do I know if I’m addicted to food?
24:31 The four stages of food addiction
41:30 Differences between food addiction and addictions to other substances
49:55 What foods people tend to be addicted to and why
54:00 The huge increase of highly processed foods on the market today and the politics behind this
57:48 Do people with food addiction need to follow a particular way of eating to achieve success and to maintain their recovery?
1:00:08 Why  “intuitive eating” doesn’t work for everyone
1:01:43 The role spirituality plays in recovery from food addiction
1:04:35 Practical steps to becoming free of food addiction

Click the link below for the audio Podcast
Food Addiction 101- with Dr. Vera Tarman, author of Food Junkies

Food Junkies Podcast Ep. 107: Netta Gorman

Netta Gorman

Netta Gorman has a passion to inspire you to live a healthier sugar-free life with joy and confidence! Netta is the host of Life After Sugar and the creator of the Life After Sugar Program.

Netta struggled with sugar cravings, headaches, bloating, and low energy. She used to feel exhausted all the time. Her energy crashes made her reach out for sweet snacks just to get through the day. She never wanted to cut out sugar. She loved desserts, chocolate, and her comfort foods. But Netta was suffering so much that she was willing to try something she had never tried before: ditching sugar.

Netta lost her extra weight, achy joints, sluggish digestion, and sugar cravings! She gained energy and discovered the real sweetness in her life. Clarissa and I are so happy she agreed to be on today’s episode!

TODAY’S EPISODE:

  • How Sugar impacted Netta’s life
  • What Netta has found to work best when working with clients
  • The Life After Sugar Program
  • The Life After Sugar Podcast
  • Netta’s unique offerings to those who want to get off and stay off sugar!
  • “Secrets” to success when it comes to remaining sugar-free
  • What’s next?
  • Signature Question

Food Junkies Podcast Ep. 106: Brian Baumal

Brian Baumal, a Registered Psychotherapist in Canada

Brian Baumal is a Registered Psychotherapist in Canada who helps people who Eat emotionally, binge eat, and/or have a food addiction; Just want a normal relationship with food and their bodies; Don’t want one slip-up to lead to an entire binge, purge or downfall; Constantly or obsessively think about their weight and/or food; have gained/lost hundreds of pounds in their lifetime; Are any weight on the scale, whether in a thinner or heavier body; Engage or think about any sort of binging, restrictive and/or purging; Are pre- or post-bariatric surgery; or Wonder why they jeopardize their health and life.

TODAY’S EPISODE:

  • Brian’s personal and professional journey
  • What are eating disorders vs food addiction and how he treats clients who have either or both
  • Differences in working with men vs women
  • Our Signature question and more!

Food Junkies Podcast Ep. 105: Esther Kane, MSW, RSW, RCC

Esther Kane

Esther Kane, MSW, RSW, RCC, has been an Eating Disorders Psychotherapist for 25+ years. She lives in Victoria BC but works all over Canada. She is the author of “It’s Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide to Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies”. She is also the host of the Compassionate Conversations Podcast & YouTube Channel, where she has recently done a series on food and body image.

TODAY’S EPISODE:

  • Her personal journey to recovery from eating disorders to food addiction
  • What is a Highly Sensitive Person?
  • The connection between HSPs & Food Addiction
  • How to take care of your HSP-specific needs
  • What she has found in the difference between men & women when it comes to FA
  • How she differentiates between food addiction & eating disorders
  • The intergenerational transmission of disordered eating
  • How she helps clients with emotional eating
  • Her thoughts on volume
  • Her audio program: Making Peace with Food & our Bodies
  • The obstacles she finds working with clients
  • The pushback she’s received from colleagues about her perspective

Food Junkies Podcast Episode 104: Dr. Jennifer Reid, MD

Dr. Jennifer Reid Headshot

After leaving academia to start a private practice, she wanted to find a way to reach a broader audience with practical, evidence-based mental health information. In addition to her private practice, she writes and podcasts as The Reflective Doc. She is also a regular contributor to Psychology Today, Doximity, and Kevin MD and a frequent podcast guest.

Dr. Jennifer Reid, MD is a Philadelphia psychiatrist, award-winning educator, writer, and podcast host. She trained at Columbia University and UCLA and is on the clinical faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. She is married to a physician and a proud mom to 2 boys. She grew up in rural North Dakota in a family of physicians and studied zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. You all have something unique to say, and the world will be better for hearing it.

TODAY’S EPISODE:

  • Dr. Reid’s personal and professional journey to becoming The Reflective Doc
  • What is Anxiety? Symptoms? Treatments?
  • Sleep deprivation and insomnia
  • Alcohol, Cannabis, Melatonin, and Sleep
  • Circadian Rhythms, naps, and caffeine
  • Seasonal Affective Disorder
  • The relationship between anxiety and procrastination
  • Establishing Safety
  • Clients in recovery
  • What’s next for Dr. Reid
  • Our signature question

Food Junkies Podcast Episode 103: Dr. Rachel Brown

Dr. Rachel Brown

Dr. Rachel Brown is a Consultant Psychiatrist in the UK who specializes in metabolic health. She graduated from Edinburgh University in 2003 and has worked in the field of psychiatry since 2004. She is a Nutrition Network Advisor and Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner. She also holds a master’s degree in medical laws and Ethics and is involved in ongoing research into ketogenic diets and mental disorders. Dr. Brown is an advocate for therapeutic carbohydrate restriction and dietary modification to address underlying metabolic dysfunction and gut dysbiosis as underlying causes of mental disorders, as well as other lifestyle measures for optimizing health.

Food Junkies Podcast Episode 102: Paul Churchill

Paul Churchill

Paul Churchill was a normal drinker in high school and most of college. He loved to drink. He played several sports in high school and football at Chapman University where he majored in Business and Spanish. His love for alcohol led him to Granada, Spain where he bought a bar in January 2006. He walked away from the bar after 34 months since he was drowning himself with alcohol. He attempted the geographical cure, moved back home to Colorado for a year, and then went to graduate school in Seattle at the University of Washington. He then moved to beautiful Bozeman, MT where he currently resides.

Paul was alcohol-free from 2010- 2012 but he looks back at that duration of sobriety and says he was a dry drunk and was staying away from alcohol on willpower alone. In 2012, his unconscious mind got the best of him and he drank after being AF for over 2 years. Later that same evening around 2:30 am when gas stations couldn’t legally sell alcohol, Paul found himself googling if he could drink rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. Talk about picking up right where he left off. Paul struggled to quit drinking for another couple of years until September 7th, 2014. In the summer of 2014, there was a DUI, a release of employment from a job, and a failed suicide attempt. After reaching out to family, and specific friends, starting a podcast, and a sobriety counter app, selecting a sponsor, eating right, and exercising, Paul Churchill took his last drink of alcohol on September 7th, 2014, and got his life back.

Food Junkies Podcast Episode 101: Food Addiction Research Clinical Study (FARCS)

Food Addiction Research Clinical Study

In Today’s episode – Food Junkies Podcast brings you Dr. Jen Unwin, Heidi Giaever, Charlotte Schon Poulsen, Frida Sandin, and David Wiss to discuss our audit of Food Addiction Treatment and the first paper Jen has published on the findings.

Dr. Jen Unwin, a Clinical Psychologist, works with the NHS helping patients manage chronic illness and achieve wellbeing. She also works with her GP husband Dr. David Unwin helping patients stick to lifestyle changes. Dr. Unwin is a fellow of the British Psychological Society and a former chair of the UK Association for Solution Focused Practice.

Heidi Giaever is a Nutrition Consultant & Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner, X-PERT Diabetes Coach & Food Addiction Counsellor with a Primary focus on Metabolic health, sustainable weight loss and healthy weight management, remission of diabetes, real food and holistic health, practical help with addictive food behaviours. She is also the Director of Huntsland Nutrition CIC, a not-for-profit community engagement company with the tag line; “Health comes before ALL else”.

Charlotte Schon Poulsen is an Alcohol & Drug therapist, health coach and nutritional advisor. She is passionate about dietary and behavioral effects on the mind and body.

Frida Sandin is a Holistic Addiction Medicine therapist, behavioral scientist, and nutritional advisor. She is a “sober addict” with a big heart to help others relate and quit the drug.

Dr. David Wiss, PhD, is an advocate for change and improvement in the emerging fields of nutrition and behavioral health. Being a dietitian, he welcomes new ideas and encourages critical thinking when collaborating with other professionals, colleagues, and students. As a leading Health Nutritionist in Los Angeles, Dr. Wiss hosted several annual non-profit conferences in Los Angeles that focused on controversial issues in nutrition. This led the California Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics to award him the “Emerging Dietetic Leader Award” in 2020.

In This Episode, you Will Learn:

  • How did Jen and Heidi come up with the idea to audit Food Addiction Treatment
  • The design of the audit study
  • What made the groups want to be involved?
  • What did we audit? What did the interventions look like
  • The food plans
  • Surprises, Assumptions, and Results
  • What do the findings mean for us as clinicians? Researchers?
  • What is the significance of doing this audit?
  • What changes have been made to how we work with clients since running this study?
  • What related research do we hope to see in the future?
  • What can we expect from each group moving forward?

Food Junkies Podcast Episode 100: Dr. Ellen Vora, MD

Dr. Ellen Vora, MD

Ellen Vora, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and yoga teacher, and she is the author of the bestselling book The Anatomy of Anxiety. She takes a functional medicine approach to mental health—considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root. Dr. Vora received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.D. from Columbia University. In her book Anatomy of Anxiety, she has a whole chapter on Food for Thought in which she shares her own personal story of discovering she had a food addiction.

Today she shares her journey to recovery with food and how that has influenced her professional career today. Namely, in how she treats the whole person, looking for places where states like anxiety and depression might be rooted in the body, whether it’s less-than-ideal nutrition and an out-of-whack gut, or poor sleep and breathing.

In This Episode, you Will Learn:

  • Ellen’s personal story
  • How food addiction plays a role in eating disorders
  • How we need to watch out for contributing to eating disorders through a food addiction treatment modality
  • The difference between true and false anxiety
  • Why it’s important to treat false anxiety first
  • The importance of a BOTH/AND approach in recovery: that multiple things can be true at the same time and that everybody has a right to their experience, regardless of what somebody else is experiencing.
  • Why Ellen believes she can tolerate some of her addictive foods when she is in different countries and on different soil
  • Does gut permeability combined with opiate-like addictive foods create a landscape for higher levels of food addiction in North America?
  • Why do we have such a hard time asking for help?
  • Why living in an Emotion-phobic culture can lead us to seek food rather than address our unmet needs
  • How advertisers prey on our fear response which activates us into that unmet need scarcity mindset
  • How do we get quiet to determine our needs in a world full of noise and adverse? Can you be radically intentional in the life choices you make?
  • How do we find the middle in bringing the eating disorder world and the food addiction world together rather than them remaining so far apart and offering opposing treatments?

Food Junkies Podcast Episode 99: Dr. James M. Greenblatt

Dr. James M. Greenblatt

A pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, James M. Greenblatt, MD, has treated patients since 1988. After receiving his medical degree and completing his psychiatry residency at George Washington University, Dr. Greenblatt completed a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer at Walden Behavioral Care in Waltham, MA, and serves as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine. Dr. Greenblatt has lectured internationally on the scientific evidence for nutritional interventions in psychiatry and mental illness. He is the author of seven books, including Finally Focused: The Breakthrough Natural Treatment Plan for ADHD. He is the founder of Psychiatry Redefined, an educational platform dedicated to the transformation of psychiatry, which offers online CME-approved courses, webinars, and fellowships for professionals about functional and integrative medicine for mental illness.

In This Episode, you Will Learn:

  • Personal/Professional Journey
  • What is Integrative Medicine
  • Nutritional Psychiatry
  • Lithium
  • Magnesium, Zinc, Vitamin D
  • ADHD & Anxiety
  • Children & The Standard American Diet
  • Substances of Abuse
  • Ghrelin & Leptin
  • FA & ED overlaps
  • Sweeteners
  • Obstacles and pushback Dr. Greenblatt has received
  • Antidepressant withdrawal
  • Signature Question
Addictions Unplugged, The Power Is Ours