• Why you’re almost certainly not a stress eater, and what you actually are instead

• The reason eating less has never worked, no matter how hard you tried, and why a stricter diet makes it worse

• The one thing to start this week that finally makes the real feeling visible

• The tool I built for my clients, to do exactly that

For most of my life I didn’t stress eat. I stress starved.

When things got hard, I just stopped. Skipped the meal. Swapped it for a protein bar, or a shake, or a piece of fruit to keep me going. Went hours without eating and barely noticed. That was my version. Stress switched my appetite off at the wall. Unplugged it.

Then, in 2025, I was waiting for cancer surgery.

I was so anxious I couldn’t sit still. Although, ironically, sometimes I’d stand still, completely frozen, unmoving. I felt like I should be doing something, anything, and there was nothing to do. Nothing to fix. Just waiting. And all that anxious energy had to go somewhere.

So for the first time in my life, I ate. Maltesers. Cadbury’s buttons. At my desk, when I was meant to be working, writing here, when I couldn’t have focused if my life depended on it. Not because I was hungry. Because I was terrified, and food was the only thing I could do something with.

Same me. Opposite behaviour. And it taught me something I’d never have learned otherwise.

The food was never the point. Not when I starved, not when I ate. Both were just a feeling I couldn’t do anything with, doing whatever I could to manage it.

You’re probably not a stress eater.

I know you call it that. Almost every woman I work with does.

But watch what you’re actually feeling when it happens. Not “stress.” Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. Anxiety. The meeting where someone took the credit and you bit the inside of your cheek. The thing you’re furious about and can’t say. The colleague you’re waiting on so you can complete a project. The project you’ve been left to pick up the pieces of because the rest of the office is on annual leave.

Those are the exact feelings women are trained out of from a young age. Anger isn’t ladylike. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t be difficult. Good girls get on with it. So you learn, early, to swallow the ones that aren’t allowed, and “stress” becomes the polite word you file all of them under, because stress is acceptable and anger isn’t. Also, not being able to express your true feelings is stressful.

So, you’re not a stress eater. You’re an anger eater who was taught not to be angry. A disappointment eater who learned not to want too much. And you often can’t even feel which one it is in the moment, because you’ve had decades of practice not feeling it at all.

That’s not a willpower problem. You cannot out-discipline a feeling you were trained never to have.

So why has eating less never worked?

Because the food was never the problem, so eating less of it was never the answer.

And it’s worse than that. When you’re frustrated, or anxious, or angry with nowhere to put it, you reach for the thing that gives a quick hit, a way to soothe or suppress or numb the ‘thing’ bubbling up in you. Nobody comfort eats broccoli, babe. It’s the chocolate (mine’s Cadbury caramel), the biscuits (chocolate Hob nobs for me), the crisps (Kettle Chips salt + vinegar). And you know it. You know it’s the exact thing standing between you and the fat loss you’re actually working toward. So you decide the fix is more willpower and a stricter diet.

But a stricter diet makes it worse, not better. Put any woman in a deep deficit and she doesn’t become calmer and more in control. Serenity is not the outcome of “stress” + eating less. Quite the opposite, she becomes more emotionally raw, more reactive, more likely to reach for food, not less.

The deficit doesn’t stop the emotional eating. It feeds it.

So you try a bit harder, eat “better,” “fail” again, and blame yourself. When the truth is, you’ve been trying to fix the wrong thing the whole time.

Below, for paid subscribers:

1. the recognition method I coach clients through,

2. why “just sit with it” sets you up to fail,

3. the one thing to do this week that finally makes the feeling visible,

4. and the free Stress Doorway Words tool to start with today.

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1. The rule that runs your eating in normal life becomes visible when life shifts. Illness is a free diagnostic.

2. You can stop obeying a rule while it’s still talking. That’s how rules actually break.

3. Your body doesn’t have to earn the right to eat.

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You catch a cold. You can’t train. You can’t move much. You’re mostly on the sofa under a blanket with a box of tissues.

Aaaaaand the voice shows up. The one that says, "If you’re not moving, you don’t deserve to eat”

This article is what to do with that voice, what to actually eat, and why the cold is showing you something useful you couldn’t see before.

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1. Notice you didn’t spiral. Or notice you did.

A few years ago, a sick week might have meant: skip breakfast to “make up for” not running. Drink black coffee. Try to push through. Crash by Wednesday afternoon and binge.

What does this week look like? Are you eating your meals? Are you skipping them? Are you negotiating?

If you’re eating AND feeling guilty, that’s not failure. That’s the work (ikik, it can feel wrong, but it isn’t!). The presence of the voice and the eating happening anyway.

If you’re not eating, that’s data too. The cold is showing you the rule that runs the rest of your year, whether sick or not.

2. Eat. Your immune system is using energy right now. Measurably.

Your body in a cold isn’t “doing nothing.” It’s running a defence operation. White cell production goes up. Protein turnover goes up. Resting metabolic rate can rise by 8 to 14 percent during an active immune response.

The rule that says “earn it through movement” is telling you to underfuel your body during the exact week your body needs more nourishment, not less.

That’s not discipline. That’s prolonging how rough you feel.

3. Ignore “feed a cold, starve a fever.” It’s from the 1500s.

It’s from a 1574 dictionary by John Withals. It’s been wrong since 1574.

Both states need fuel. Both need hydration. Your body isn’t picking and choosing which immune challenge to power. It’s powering all of them.

Feed both.

4. Recognise the cold didn’t create the rule. It exposed it.

The rule was already there. The rule that says food has to be earned through movement. The rule that says rest is a moral failure. The rule that says your body needs to deserve fuel before it gets it.

This is what illness does. It removes the variables that hide your rules. You can’t move, so you can’t perform the deal you’ve been performing for years. The deal that “lets you eat”. With the deal removed, the rule becomes visible.

This is also what grief does. And holidays. And busy weeks. And periods. And travel. And anything that disrupts your normal pattern enough to expose the rule that’s been running underneath it.

You don’t see the rule when you’re successfully obeying it. You see it the second you can’t. Or at least, you feel it suddenly.

These moments aren’t setbacks. They’re free diagnostics.

5. Expect the voice to keep showing up. That’s not failure.

Here’s what most people don’t tell you about breaking food rules.

The behaviour shifts first. The voice catches up later. Sometimes much later.

You can be eating in a way that genuinely supports your body, while the voice is still telling you you don’t deserve it. That’s not a sign the work isn’t working. That’s a sign the work is happening at the level it has to happen, behaviour first, internal narrative second.

You don’t have to wait for the voice to go quiet to act.

You can hear the voice say, “you haven’t earned this” and pick up the fork anyway.

That’s how rules actually break. Not by silencing them. By no longer obeying them while they’re still talking.

If it helps, imagine it’s a man telling you to “give us a smile, luv”. You’ll feel way more comfortable.

6. Remember, your body doesn’t have to earn the right to eat.

This is the line to take with you.

Not because it’s an affirmation. Because it’s a fact.

Your body doesn’t earn fuel through performance. Your body uses fuel to perform. The order matters. The rule that says it’s the other way around is the rule we’re breaking.

You’re not behind. You’re not failing. You had a cold, and you fed yourself.

That’s not the thing to feel guilty about. That’s the thing to notice.

If you’re tired of negotiating with food every time life shifts, sickness, stress, grief, a complicated week, the work inside Dieting Differently is built for exactly that.

You get the protocols I use with my private clients. The 90-second Cortisol Reset for when you can’t think clearly. The Evening Eating Cheat Sheet when 9pm hits. The Body Composition framework that doesn’t require tracking. Weekly coaching that goes after the rule running underneath, not the surface behaviour.

£65 a month. £199 a year. Annual members save £581 and get the full library back catalogue and everything else I build.

Choose your membership

The membership isn’t more information. It’s the integration of what you already know.

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