Katie came to me exhausted and frustrated.
Not just tired — the kind of exhausted that doesn’t shift after a full night’s sleep. She was juggling a demanding job, a full life, and barely a moment to herself — and by mid-afternoon she was raiding the biscuit tin almost on autopilot. By evening, it was chocolate. She knew what she was doing. She just couldn’t seem to stop.
“I have no willpower,” she told me in our first session.
She was wrong. And I told her so.
What Katie had wasn’t a willpower problem. It was a stress response. Her body was doing exactly what stressed bodies do — and nobody had ever told her that.
Your Body Is Not Betraying You
Here’s what nobody tells you about sugar cravings: they’re not a character flaw. They’re a survival mechanism.
When you’re stressed — really stressed, the kind that runs quietly in the background of a full, demanding life — your body produces cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone, and one of its jobs is to signal your brain to find fast energy. Quickly. Now.
And what provides fast energy? Sugar. Refined carbs. The biscuit tin. The chocolate in the back of the cupboard you told yourself was for baking.
Your body isn’t weak. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do. The problem is that it was designed for a very different kind of stress — short bursts, not the chronic, relentless pressure most women in their 40s are carrying every single day.
To understand what that chronic stress is actually doing to your nervous system, Your Nervous System Is the Real Boss is worth a read.
The Blood Sugar Trap
When you eat sugar under stress, something predictable happens.
Your blood sugar spikes. You feel a brief lift — energy, relief, a moment of something that almost feels like calm. And then it crashes. Hard. Which triggers more cortisol. Which signals your brain to find more fast energy. Which sends you back to the biscuit tin.
This is the blood sugar rollercoaster — and once you’re on it, it’s genuinely difficult to get off. Not because you lack discipline, but because you’re fighting your own biochemistry.
For many women I work with, this cycle has been running so long it feels like just the way they are. The 3pm slump. The evening sugar hit. Waking at 3am and reaching for something sweet before they’re even fully awake. It feels like a habit. But underneath it, it’s a nervous system calling for help in the only language it currently knows.
Why It Gets Worse in Your 40s
If you’ve noticed your cravings intensifying in recent years, you’re not imagining it.
As oestrogen and progesterone begin to fluctuate in perimenopause, your body’s ability to regulate blood sugar becomes less stable. At the same time, the demands on most women in their 40s are at their absolute peak — career, kids, ageing parents, the mental load that never clocks off, the slow creeping feeling that you are holding absolutely everything together and nobody has noticed.
More stress. Less hormonal buffer. A nervous system that’s been running on high alert for so long it’s forgotten what off feels like.
If you’re also noticing brain fog, forgetfulness, or an inability to focus, Why You Can’t Seem to Get Anything Done explains how chronic stress affects your executive function too.
The result is a body that reaches for sugar not out of greed, but out of genuine need — because survival mode is the only gear it’s been in for years.
The Follow-Up Session I’ll Never Forget
The moment that stays with me is from Katie’s follow-up session.
She paused mid-sentence and said something like — “I’ve just realised I haven’t even thought about the biscuit tin this week.”
Not “I resisted it.” Not “I was good.” She just… hadn’t thought about it. The craving that had felt like a personality trait — something she’d built her whole relationship with food around — had quietly stopped running the show.
By the end of six months, her MYMOP score — a validated measure of how much a health challenge is affecting your daily life — had moved from 4 out of 6 to 1 out of 6. The numbers matter. But that moment in the follow-up session? That’s what I actually work for.
What Actually Helps
Katie didn’t need more willpower. She needed to stop the cycle at its source.
We worked on stabilising her blood sugar through regular, balanced meals — protein, fibre, healthy fat — so her body stopped lurching between spikes and crashes. We looked at where in her day the stress was highest, and what her body was actually asking for in those moments. And we worked on the nervous system piece — because no amount of meal planning holds if your body is still stuck in fight or flight.
If restriction and willpower have never worked for you long term, Why Diets and Weight Loss Fads Don’t Work explains exactly why — and what to do instead.
The cravings didn’t disappear because she got stricter with herself. They disappeared because she gave her body what it was actually looking for.
The Shift Worth Making
If you’re reaching for sugar when you’re stressed, your body is communicating something. The question isn’t how to shut it up — it’s how to understand what it’s actually asking for.
Usually, it’s asking for steadiness. Safety. A nervous system that finally gets to rest.
That’s not something a diet can give you. It’s not something willpower can manufacture. It’s what happens when you stop fighting your body and start working with it instead — and it changes everything. Not just what you eat. How you feel in your own skin.
That’s exactly what I work on with the women I support. Not rules. Not restriction. A way of finally understanding what your body has been trying to tell you — and giving it what it genuinely needs.
If you want to know where your nervous system currently sits, start with my free 3-minute quiz. It takes less time than your morning coffee and it might be the first thing in a while that makes you feel genuinely understood.
About the Author
Mariko Broome is a women’s health coach in Bath, specialising in burnout and nervous system health. She works with women who’ve tried the conventional route — and are ready for something different.
