Episode
Episode 282: Dr. Erin Bellamy | Can a Diet Replace Psychiatric Meds? Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy for Food Addiction & Mental Health
- Podcast
- Food Junkies Podcast
- Published
- May 21, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3259
- Processing state
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Summary
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 (International Ketogenic Research & Therapy), and a research fellow at the University of East London. She has been researching and applying ketogenic metabolic therapy in clinical settings since 2014, with a background that bridges eating disorders, psychiatric research, and metabolic health. In this episode, Vera and Erin discuss: How Erin went from eating disorder and alexithymia research to ketogenic metabolic psychiatry — and why the field's "biopsychosocial" model was missing the bio The difference between metabolic psychiatry, ketogenic therapy, and therapeutic carbohydrate restriction — and why the terminology matters What carbohydrate range actually produces therapeutic ketosis (and why "dirty keto" doesn't cut it) The shared mechanistic pathways across psychiatric diagnoses — including mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance, and neuroinflammation Why antipsychotic medications create metabolic dysfunction, and how ketogenic therapy can help offset those side effects The GABA/glutamate shift that makes ketones naturally anxiolytic — and why this may work differently than the serotonin model of depression The "buffer effect": what it feels like to be in ketosis when you're a food addict — and why some people describe it as a pane of glass between themselves and a trigger food How ketogenic therapy compares to GLP-1 medications (Ozempic/ Wegovy ) for reducing food noise —…