After 32 years in the NHS spent researching the power of hope in chronic illness, Jen had a realization that reframed her entire life: despite all her training in human behavior, her decades of yo-yo dieting and swinging between overweight and underweight were never a willpower problem — they were an addiction to sugar and refined carbs. She was nearly 50 when the pieces finally clicked.

Jen offers a perspective few others in this space can: she’s a scientist at the forefront of getting food addiction officially recognized — co-author of the first-ever treatment study in the field and coordinator of an international expert consensus — and she’s lived the struggle from the inside too. Alongside her husband, Dr. David Unwin (featured with her in BBC’s The Truth About Carbs, seen by 3.7 million viewers), she’s helping rewrite how medicine approaches food, one patient at a time.

We dive into ideas like:

• Why hope isn’t fluffy — the three concrete components of hopefulness, and the research showing it predicts outcomes better than age, gender, or severity of illness… including mortality itself.
• The solution-focused questions that transform how people see their own recovery — starting with “what would better look like?” instead of “what’s wrong with you?”
• Jen’s own story: childhood comfort eating, being roped into her mum’s crash diets as a teenager, and the shame of being a psychologist who couldn’t control her own behavior.
• The eureka moment — hearing Bitten Johnson describe sugar addiction and realizing her whole history was just her trying to control a substance she couldn’t moderate.
• Why abstinence — not another diet — is the treatment, and the study showing 62% of participants in full remission from food addiction at one year.
• The uphill battle to get “ultra-processed food use disorder” into the ICD and DSM — why your doctor currently has nowhere to refer you, while gambling, alcohol, and nicotine addictions all have recognized treatment pathways.
• How 37 of 40 international experts reached consensus that food addiction is real, treatable, and not fully explained by eating disorders or obesity.
• What peace with food looks like for Jen today — and why getting this condition recognized is the mission she says she’ll “die happy” completing.

Jen speaks with the warmth of someone who spent a career studying hope and the conviction of someone who found her own — part pioneering researcher, part fellow traveler in recovery — making the case that food addiction deserves the same recognition, compassion, and treatment as any other addiction.

If you’ve ever felt like you were the problem — like everyone else could moderate and you just couldn’t — this conversation will show you it was never about willpower, and there’s real science on your side.