Here’s what’s inside:
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:
the recognition method I coach clients through,
why “just sit with it” sets you up to fail,
the one thing to do this week that finally makes the feeling visible,
and the free Stress Doorway Words tool to start with today.
