Why Stress Makes You Crave Sugar
Deadlines, phone’s ringing non-stop, baby crying, slow internet, stuck in rush hour traffic, loved one fighting cancer and you’re the primary caretaker. The pressure, tension, and fatigue mount and suddenly sugar feels less like a choice and more like a necessity. That’s not a lack of discipline. That’s biology interacting with behavior.
The Science: Why Sugar Becomes the Default
When you experience stress, whether physical or psychological, it also can wreak havoc with weight control by releasing the so-called stress hormones – adrenaline, corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH), and cortisol – to meet what the body perceives as an energy. High amounts of cortisol may cause deposits of fat around the midsection. Stress also depletes your body’s glycogen fuel reserves.
The longer and more intense the stress, the lower your blood sugar will dip and that often leads to carbohydrate cravings. Your stress may make you hungry and cause you to store more fat. And of course, one of our favorite ways to relieve stress is by reaching for the nearest candy bar or cookie and that leads to higher insulin levels and carb carvings in what can be a destructive loop of perpetual craving and eating.
Step-by-step:
- Stress occurs
- Cortisol rises
- Appetite increases
- Preference shifts toward quick energy foods (sugar and fat)
Once we experience and complete a stressful episode, cortisol levels should fall, but if the stress doesn’t go away – or if a person’s stress response gets stuck in the “on” position – cortisol may stay elevated. This increase appetite and may ramp up motivation in general, including the motivation to eat. The research indicates that elevated cortisol is associated with increased intake of highly palatable foods, particularly sugar (Dallman et al., 2003; Harvard Health Publishing).
This is because sugar:
- provides rapid energy
- temporarily dampens stress responses
- activates reward pathways in the brain
Your food cravings, your food history, and the design of snacks mixed with the hormones in your body require a smart food strategist to avoid trouble.
The Behavioral Layer: Where the Pattern Forms
Here is where it is important to understand the process. The first time you eat sugar under stress, it provides relief. That relief becomes reinforcement. Rinse and repeat that cycle enough times and you don’t just have a craving; you have a pattern.
Regardless, if a person is on the GLP1’s, Ozempic, Munjaro, the injections or the tablets, if you do not focus on the habits and thinking driving your actions, progress and accomplishments with weight loss will be for naught.
Here is where Behavioral Nutrition enters the room. Behavioral Nutrition focuses on not just what you eat, but the pattern that drives it. That is why Behavior comes before Nutrition. Our nature, preferences, access to food, emotional factors, in this case stress, often call the food shots and decisions. The very act of eating is driven by layered behavioral, environmental and emotional cues that most of the time we are not even aware that they are exerting influence over us. Sometimes eating is not about food, but what is eating you.
Why Willpower Fails Here
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter – a molecule that sends messages from neuron to neuron in the brain to another, produced by an enzymatic pathway in the brain, It’s been called the “feel-good molecule.“ It creates pleasurable sensations in your brain every time you engage in sexual relations, hear your favorite music, dig into an ice cream sundae, or (unfortunately) use cocaine. Scientists have isolated it as a key to understanding drug and alcohol addiction.
While drugs such as alcohol, cocaine, and opiates seem to boost the release of dopamine and other neurochemicals involved in the change in thought and behavior that characterize addictive states recent findings suggest that these same neurochemicals may be involved even when we form dependencies on such things as coffee cake, or gambling. Furthermore, scientists such as Harvard psychiatry professor Hans Breiter, have discovered through magnetic resonance imaging that the same brain centers that are activated during the ecstasy of drug use also do so in compulsive gamblers on a high.
This suggests that not only drug use but any recurring activity that triggers dopamine release such as eating certain foods can reshape the brain in important ways that compel you to keep repeating that action and that make “just saying no” more difficult. Scientists call this neuroadaptation, and it could at least partially explain why you can’t stop yourself from wolfing down those chocolate-covered raisins. This is not to say that dopamine is the only chemical involved in the thought processes of drug abusers or addictive-like behaviors.
Most significant in this analysis is that teaching people coping skills not only changes their behavior but may change the brain activity that underlies it. That’s why strategy is so critical in managing certain types of foods.
Under stress:
- decision-making becomes automatic
- impulse control decreases
- reward-seeking increases
So, telling yourself to “just say no” is not a strategy. It’s wishful thinking.
The Behavioral Nutrition Strategy
1. Anticipate the Trigger
Don’t wait until you’re stressed to decide what to eat.
Ask:
- When do I typically crave sugar?
- What situations trigger it?
2. Replace, Don’t Remove
Eliminating sugar without a substitute creates friction.
Instead:
- sweet craving → protein + fat alternative
- stress moment → structured snack
3. Change the Sequence
Interrupt the automatic loop:
Stress → sugar → relief
Replace with:
Stress → pause → alternative → relief
Even a short pause changes the outcome.
Sugar cravings aren’t random. They are learned, reinforced, and predictable. If something is 100 percent predictable, it’s 100 percent changeable. Stress may be inevitable. Losing control around food is not. 📞 Contact Dr. Stephen Gullo’s office (212-734-7200) to gain a coach and partner for your individualized journey, tailored to you. Follow our YouTube Channel, Weight Loss and Relationships Reimagined.