Welcome to the Optimal Protein Podcast. I'm Vanessa Spina.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Vanessa, and I am so excited for today's

episode. We have Dr. Vera Tarman joining us again. She is the author of Food Junkies, one of my

favorite books about food addiction. And she just published an incredible paper, which is all about the five stages of food addiction and she just published an incredible paper which is all about the five

stages of food addiction so we talk all about what ultra processed food does to us why it is addictive

in the first place and understanding all the hormonal shifts and connections and the neurobiology

it really is so helpful, I believe, to

understand what exactly is happening to us, not only physiologically, but also what is happening

to our brains in terms of the dopamine receptors and how ultra-processed food actually becomes

addictive. And we talk about all the different ways that you can help with dealing with food addiction

and how you can address it at the different stages.

Because what is brilliant about her model is that different treatments are required at different stages.

So for example, for someone who's in the early stages of

food addiction, doing something like keto is actually extremely helpful, whereas doing something like

intermittent fasting may not be because someone is not fat fueled or fat adapted yet. And so it is not

the same response, whereas someone who is in the mid or later stages of food

addiction needs a different approach.

So we talk about all the different hormonal connections between insulin, insulin resistance,

dopamine, and how that is connected to leptin, ghrelin, and the peptides that are responsible

for satiety.

We talk about all the different

ways that you can actually bolster your own physiology so that you are not susceptible to

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