Hello and welcome back.

In our last Emotional Eating month, we explored why food can still feel like comfort, even after all the progress you’ve made. We looked at how emotional eating isn’t a failure or lack of willpower. It’s simply a habit your brain learned to soothe stress, tiredness, boredom, or difficult feelings.

We also talked about the habit loop:
Cue → Behaviour → Reward

When a cue appears, the brain remembers what once brought relief and nudges you towards food. But awareness changes that. When you notice the cue and pause, you create space to choose differently.

This time, we’re going a little deeper into what happens when stress shows up.

Because even when you’re doing brilliantly, life still happens:
A bad day at work, a sleepless night, a difficult conversation, or just feeling overwhelmed.

That’s when the brain’s old comfort circuits can try to switch back on.
So this month is all about learning how to stay steady when that happens, how to respond rather than react.

By the end of this session, you’ll understand what’s really happening in your body when stress hits, and you’ll have reliable ways to soothe yourself without needing food to do the job.

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The Science of Stress

We touched on stress in gold, so here’s a quick recap before we dive deeper:

When your brain senses threat, even something as simple as an email, a thought, or a tone of voice, it releases cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals are your body’s built-in protection system, designed to help you react quickly in moments of danger and get you to safety.

The same hormones that helped our ancestors survive are now in overdrive in our modern world. Stress is everywhere, and for many of us, it’s constant. When cortisol stays elevated for too long, it can trigger a range of reactions, such as:

Increased fat storage
Disrupted appetite hormones (leptin and ghrelin)
Stronger cravings for high-calorie foods

When stress levels drop, those cravings fade naturally.
So our goal isn’t to fight the craving, it’s to quickly reduce stress, so the urge never takes over.

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Relax First, Choice Second

When you’re tense or under pressure, the logical part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, temporarily goes offline. That’s why you can know exactly what you should do, yet still do the opposite. Research shows that stress makes you more likely to fall back on habits rather than act with intention.

Over time, chronic stress strengthens these automatic responses and weakens your sensitivity to new or goal-directed choices. This is why, when you’re stressed, you might reach for food that’s comforted you in the past, not because it truly helps, but because your brain is running on habit, not conscious choice.

To break this cycle, we need to change how we respond to stress, so we can pause, reset, and make decisions that genuinely serve our long-term wellbeing.

So here’s what we are going to do: Relax first. Choose second.

That’s easier said than done, of course, especially when stress feels overwhelming. I’m going to share some practical tools to help you relax when stressed and to interrupt those automatic habits so that you can make choices that truly support your wellbeing.

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Tool #1: The 90-Second Reset

When you feel a craving after a stressful event, this is what I want you to try in that moment:

1️⃣ Name it:
Say gently to yourself, “I’m feeling stressed.”
This helps shift your brain out of survival mode.

2️⃣ Breathe:
Inhale for 4…
Exhale for 6.
Do that a few times. The longer exhale tells your body the emergency has passed.

3️⃣ Hand on heart:
Place your hand on your chest and say, “I’m safe right now.”
You might not believe it straight away, that’s okay. The words still help.

4️⃣ Stay with it for 90 seconds.
That’s all. Emotional waves usually pass within a minute and a half, unless we feed them with panic or judgement.

This simple reset reduces the stress, stopping the craving at its root.
It tells your body: You’re okay. You don’t need food to feel safe.

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Tool #2: The Stress Audit

Most of us have a few repeat stress triggers we could plan for.
On your worksheet, you’ll find a section called My Stress Audit. Here is what I want you to do:

Write down:

What usually sets me off (e.g., emails after 9 p.m., clutter, arguments).
How I normally react.
What I can do differently next time.

Do this for the next two weeks and pay attention to any patterns that emerge. Is it happening after you speak to your parents, or as a response to work stress? The more aware you are, the more power you have to change it.

Another very powerful thing we can do is create anchors.

You might recognise anchors from my bestselling book, where I go into them in more depth. But for now, anchors are small cues that link your mind and body to a feeling or behaviour, like pressing a mental “play” button for calm or control.

Everyday life is full of them. Sitting on the sofa might cue your brain to snack, or opening the fridge after work might trigger the urge to eat. These are old anchors, habits your brain has learned over time.

The magic is that you can create new ones. When you repeat a calm action in the same context, like dimming the lights and making a herbal tea, your brain starts to connect that cue with peace and rest.

So create a simple wind-down anchor, a signal that says, “The day is done.”
Try one of these:

Play your Chillpod as you get into bed.
Dim the lights and sip a herbal tea.
Write down three small wins from the day: “I paused.” “I breathed.” “I stopped at enough.”

Each time you repeat your anchor, your brain learns to end the day with success instead of stress. And if you’d like to dive deeper, I’ve attached the chapter on anchors from The Weight’s Over below the video.

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A Word on Sweet Urges

You might also notice sugar cravings pop up more when you’re emotionally drained. Often that’s just your brain asking for energy or comfort. Instead of turning to sweet things automatically, we can divert the craving by answering the real need:

If it’s energy, go for protein or movement.
If it’s comfort, try warmth, connection, or stillness.

You’ll quickly start to know which one your body was really asking for.

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Wrap-Up

You can’t remove stress from life, but you can teach your brain to stay calm inside it.
Every time you practise Relax First, Choice Second, you prove that food no longer has to be your first responder.

And remember this:

“You can’t control the waves, but you can learn to surf them.”

You can do this, even when it feels hard.
Keep noticing, calming, and trusting, and the rest will follow.