Episode 58: Here’s Why You Can’t Stop Stress Eating & Drinking (And What to Do About It)
How to Break Free from Sugar Addiction and Take Control of Your Health
If you’ve ever found yourself reaching for something sweet when you’re stressed, tired, or just feeling off, you’re not alone. Sugar addiction is real—and it’s more common than most people realize. In this week’s episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I’m diving deep into why sugar is so addictive, how it impacts your body and mind, and what you can actually do to reduce your intake and feel more in control.
Why Refined Sugar Feels So Hard to Quit
Refined sugar isn’t just tasty—it’s engineered to be addictive. Food manufacturers know how to hit that bliss point: the perfect combo of sugar, salt, and fat that lights up the reward centers of your brain. That’s why you can polish off a whole sleeve of cookies and still crave more.
And it’s not just about flavor. Sugar can also become a go-to coping mechanism when we’re dealing with emotional stress, anxiety, or overwhelm. The spike in dopamine and quick energy boost can feel like a temporary solution—but it often leads to a crash, guilt, and more cravings.
The Connection Between Stress, Emotional Eating & the Nervous System
One of the key things I talked about in this episode is how dysregulation in the nervous system can fuel sugar cravings. When we’re in a chronic state of stress—whether from work, relationships, or internal pressure—our bodies seek comfort. That’s where sugar often comes in.
But there are better ways to support your nervous system.
Practical Tools to Curb Cravings Without Feeling Deprived
Here are a few strategies I use with clients (and myself!) to reduce sugar intake and build healthier habits:
Start with awareness, not judgment. Notice your triggers and patterns around sugar without shaming yourself. Awareness is the first step to change.
Incorporate mindfulness and somatic tools. Practices like meditation, deep breathing, or the butterfly hug can help calm your nervous system without reaching for food.
Prioritize balanced meals. When your meals have protein, fiber, and healthy fats, your blood sugar stays more stable—and cravings drop.
Explore emotional support. Working with a therapist trained in somatic therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you develop better coping tools for emotional regulation.
You're Not Broken—The System Is
If you’re struggling with sugar, it’s not a lack of willpower. It's often a mix of biological, emotional, and environmental factors. You can create a more balanced, empowered relationship with food—one that supports your goals and your nervous system.
Links:
-
Jayd (00:00):
If you find that you tend to stress eat a lot or you have other unhealthy regulation coping mechanisms that you don't like and you want to change them, I really recommend starting to think about other ways that you can regulate your nervous system and really prioritize giving yourself a menu of things that you can choose from so that you're not always feeling like you have to choose or go for the food or go for the alcohol. Because the more that you give yourself these choices and the more often that you choose these other things, it makes it easier. It rewires your brain so that in the future you'll more often regulate with things that are healthy for you and aren't going to cause unwanted weight gain or other side effects like alcohol and refined sugars have on our bodies.
(01:00)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients. In today's episode, we're going to talk about why it is so hard to stop eating sugary foods. I'm going to share with you a conversation that I had with my Twitch chat while I was live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash JD gains. In addition to talking about why it is so hard for us to break up with sugary foods, I'm also going to give some tips for how you can reduce your intake of refined sugars. And before we get into the episode, if you are interested in learning more about how to eat healthy in a way that supports your fitness goals, make sure to check out my Healthy Diet Makeover book.
(01:45)
I've created a five-step process that I share with all of my personal training clients for cleaning up the diet, getting your calorie intake right and how to meal plan and meal prep for healthy eating. It's a pretty quick read and it's very simple, straight to the point guidance on cleaning up your diet and getting your diet on track. You can find the physical book on Amazon and order it there, or you can download the ebook from my website. I do also have a coaching program that goes along with this book that you can find more information for on my website. Just go to Jaydigains.com and scroll down to look at the coaching program options. Now, without further ado, let's get into the episode and talk about why it's so hard to stop eating sugary foods.
(02:38)
The thing about a lot of foods that have refined sugars in them or beverages that have refined sugars in them, they are engineered to be addictive. They're literally made to make you addicted to them, so having it just once or twice greatly increases the likelihood that you'll do it again pretty soon because food companies actually will test their products by putting people in MRI machines and then they will take a look at their brains when they eat a chip, and then based on the activity in their brain, if it's lighting up areas that say might get lit up by you getting a hit of cocaine or something, they will tweak the flavor so it lights up more of those reward centers, and that's how they make the foods more and more addictive. You have to completely stay away from sugary stuff or you'll easily eat too much.
(03:34)
I honestly think that I have to stay away from sugary foods too. I have a very addictive personality. I do tend to get addicted to video games pretty easily, and sugar sugary food or just like high sodium snack foods is a big one for me too, Cheez-Its just a sucker for cheesy, cheesy, salty snack foods, and when I'm stressed, I'm more susceptible to that. It hits those reward centers in your brain and gets your body to release dopamine, and if you're really, really stressed or you're not getting hits of dopamine from other more healthy sources, then it can be very easy for food to become this sole source of dopamine. And that's where a lot of people, especially people with A DHD tend to get stuck in the sugar addiction because we already tend to have low dopamine to begin with, and our systems get dysregulated more easily, so we're more susceptible to that kind of stuff.
(04:37)
You're still weak to beer, hard to stay away. Yeah. Alcohol's another one that some of my clients struggle with, and it's hard because alcohol's not just something that gives you a nice buzz. It's also for a lot of people a ritual, right? It's how they wind down after a stressful day at work. They have a couple glasses of wine or a couple beers with their partner, with their friends. It's a communal experience. It's a relaxing experience for a lot of people, and that's where you kind of get caught, which again, if it becomes so much of a way that you regulate yourself, you don't have other ways that you regulate your nervous system that are not eating or drinking, then you become very susceptible to getting addicted. So it's something you got to watch out for, and once again, you got to be really mindful of taking care of your system and approach your self-care as your nervous system is like a really complex computer.
(05:40)
It gets overheated, and if you have a DHD or autism, it gets overheated easily, so you need to have things that you do to cool it down or regulate yourself, and a lot of people just by default end up turning to food to regulate themselves That gets them to a calm baseline level. If that's your only way that you regulate yourself very easily, you could end up gaining unwanted weight or ending up with an addiction to sugar or alcohol or both. I think it's worth investing in some resources to learn how to regulate your nervous system, either by going to therapy, working with a somatic therapist, journaling, cultivate a nice little library in your brain of things that usually work to help calm your nervous system that's not eating or drinking something great. Ways to regulate your nervous system without eating or drinking something include mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing exercises.
(06:40)
This is why yoga is really great for a lot of people to bring them mental clarity and peace because yoga and breathing exercises that are part of yoga are all about focusing in the present moment, being mindful and present and paying attention to your body, paying attention to your breath, and focusing on what is happening right now so you can get out of your mind and out of your thinking about the future or stressing about the past, what's happening right now, and you focus on the sensations of your body while you're exercising or while you're doing breathing work. Just taking a moment to sit back and just focus on your breathing and take a few deep breaths is a great way to get into the present moment and can regulate your nervous system. But there's also some somatic exercises that come from EMDR therapy, which include tracking something with your eyes that goes left to right because bilateral stimulation of your brain where you go left, right, left, right, left, whether that's your eyeballs moving or you feel something you're doing taps left right, or you're hearing music that goes from your left ear to your right ear has a great effect on calming your mind and helping you when you're in a really dysregulated state.
(08:00)
So a really common somatic EMDR exercise for helping you to regulate your nervous system is called the butterfly hug. Basically, you take your hands across your shoulders like this, you're giving yourself a hug, and then you just tap side to side and you just try to focus on the feeling of that tap left, right, left, and you focus on the feeling of the taps, but there's all kinds of other ways that you can just tap left, right on your neck, on your shoulders, on your chest, and then exercise itself is a great way to regulate your nervous system. You don't have to go to the gym and just crush your body and stress yourself. Sometimes your workouts can just be, I need to regulate my nervous system. I just need to get some blood flowing and I need to do something that's not stressful to my system.
(08:50)
But just movement, moving your body and paying attention, the movement of your body is another really great way to regulate your nervous system. If you find that you tend to stress eat a lot or you have other unhealthy regulation, coping mechanisms that you don't like and you want to change them, I really recommend starting to think about other ways that you can regulate your nervous system and really prioritize giving yourself kind of a menu of things that you can choose from so that you're not always feeling like you have to choose or go for the food or go for the alcohol, because the more that you give yourself these choices and the more often that you choose these other things, it makes it easier. It rewires your brain so that in the future you'll more often regulate with things that are healthy for you and aren't going to cause unwanted weight gain or other side effects like alcohol and refined sugars have on our bodies.
(09:50)
But getting with a therapist, especially someone who works with Somatic Therapy Strategies, EMDR is a great example. Cognitive behavioral therapy also has a lot of physical exercises, mindfulness, right? Mindfulness. These are all great forms of therapy that can help you to develop a better habit of regulating your nervous system, and it's worth doing, I think, because if you are not really good at regulating your nervous system, it's likely that there are other parts of your life that are suffering in addition to just, oh, I'm eating a lot more than I would like, or I'm drinking a lot more than I would like. You probably have relationships in your life that are suffering because of your poor regulation, right? There's probably boundaries that you need to set in your life towards work or in other relationships that you just haven't been regulated enough to be able to set those boundaries, right?
(10:49)
So I think it's worth doing for sure, but if you are interested in working with a therapist to learn how to regulate your nervous system better, you could just go to psychology, what is it? Psychology today.org. If you have health insurance, you probably can get a lot of your therapy covered through your insurance, so go log into whatever your portal is for your insurance, and usually they'll provide lists of providers that take their insurance, and there's also a lot of free resources online as well. There's also courses that a lot of therapists have put together and they sell. Basically, this is a course on mindfulness, or this is a course on EMDR, so there are so many options out there for you, so don't feel like you're trapped in. This is going to be like this forever. It does take some time to learn new ways to regulate yourself, but it's definitely worth it, and there's free resources out there, and there's also people who professionally you can work with to learn new ways of regulating your nervous system.
(12:04)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you're interested in learning about me and the services and products that I offer, head to my website, Jaydigains.com, and don't forget to order your copy of the Healthy Diet Makeover book from my website or from Amazon. The links for that are in the show notes of this episode and in the video description, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel if you're watching on YouTube so that you always get the latest videos. If you're listening to the episode, make sure to follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure to eat your veggies, eat your protein, stay hydrated, and take good care of yourself. I'll see you next time.
Subscribe for Updates ✉️
Sign up to get notified whenever new episodes drop. Opt in for more tips on training, fat loss, and nutrition by filling out the form below:
Your privacy is important to me! I will never share your information with any third party. Unsubscribe from the email list at any time.
