Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash
In short: When you’re short of sleep or under stress for a long time, your body asks for more food, and especially for quick, sweet, soft food, while your energy to move, cook and choose drops. Over weeks and months, that can show on the scales and around your middle. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do, so willpower has very little to do with it. What helps is looking after your sleep and your nervous system first, and feeding yourself steadily through the day.
The alarm goes off after a broken night. You woke at two, and again at four, and you’ve been lying there going over everything since. You get up feeling like cotton wool. Coffee helps a little. Then a croissant, because you need something. By mid-morning you’re hungry again, a fidgety, urgent kind of hungry. By the afternoon you’d do almost anything for something sweet. And in the evening, too tired to cook, you pick at whatever’s in the fridge and go to bed feeling heavy and cross with yourself.
If that sounds like a lot of your days lately, I’d like to explain what’s going on. Because once you understand how sleep and stress pull on your appetite, you can stop blaming yourself and start looking after the real cause.
How does a bad night change your appetite?
After a short or broken night, a few things happen in your body at the same time.
Your hunger signals get louder. Your body has a messenger that says “I’m hungry” and another that says “I’ve had enough”. After a poor night, the first one turns up and the second one turns down. So you feel hungrier, and it takes more food before you feel satisfied.
Your body asks for quick fuel. A tired body wants energy, fast. And the fastest energy comes from sugar and soft, white carbs: bread, pastries, sweets. Your brain knows this perfectly well, so that’s what it asks for. The trouble is that quick fuel burns quickly. Your blood sugar goes up, then drops again, and the drop brings back the hunger, the tiredness and the craving.
The wise voice gets quieter. You know that little part of you that pauses and asks “do I really want this?” When you’re tired, it’s the first part of your brain to go quiet, while the part that wants pleasure and comfort gets louder. Your character hasn’t changed overnight. Your batteries have.
You move less. When you’re exhausted, the walk gets skipped, you take the car instead, and cooking feels like climbing a mountain. Ready meals and takeaways become the easy option, simply because they’re easy.
I wrote more about why good sleep matters so much in Let’s talk about sleep.
Why do I crave sugar when I’m stressed?
When something stresses you, whether it’s a deadline, a worry about someone you love, or a difficult phone call, your body switches into alert mode. It’s the ancient response that once helped us run away from danger. Your heart beats faster, your muscles tense, and your stress hormone, cortisol, tells your body to release sugar into your blood, so you have fuel to run.
Of course, you don’t run. You sit at your desk, or in the car, or at the kitchen table, and the sugar isn’t used. And afterwards, your body wants to refill its stores, quickly. So it asks for sweet things, and for fatty, salty, creamy things, which calm that alert feeling for a little while. That’s why, after a hard day, toast and jam or a bowl of crisps can feel almost medicinal.
Once in a while, this is no problem at all. The difficulty comes when the stress never really switches off. Then your body stays a little on alert all the time, and your appetite stays turned up with it. I shared some ideas for gently reducing sugar cravings if they’ve become a daily companion. And if they tend to arrive with the early dark, I wrote about that in Comfort eating in autumn.
Can stress and poor sleep make you gain weight?
Over time, they can contribute, yes. More hunger, more quick snacks, more evening picking, less movement and more tiredness all add up quietly, week after week. And when stress goes on for a long time, the body tends to hold on to its reserves, especially around the middle. It’s as if it’s preparing for a hard winter that never ends.
I want to be gentle and honest here. Weight is complicated, and every body is different. I’m not interested in making anyone afraid of their belly or of sugar. What I find helpful is this: if you’ve been eating “well” and still feel your body changing during a stressful or sleepless period, it may not be your food at all. It may be your nights and your nerves. And that’s a kinder place to start looking.
How do sleep and stress feed each other?
This is the part I always draw for people, because it explains so much. Stress makes it harder to fall asleep and easier to wake in the night. A poor night makes you more sensitive to stress the next day, and hungrier. You reach for quick fuel, your blood sugar goes up and down, and those dips can wake you in the night too. The next day starts tired again.
Round and round it goes. The lovely thing about a circle is that you can step out of it at any point. You don’t have to fix everything at once. Better sleep calms stress. Calmer stress improves sleep. And steady meals help both.
Why does this get harder in midlife?
For many women, perimenopause and menopause add another layer. Changing hormones can make sleep lighter, bring night sweats and early waking, and make the body more sensitive to stress and to blood sugar ups and downs. Many women also carry a lot at this age: work, ageing parents, grown children who still need them. So the circle above can turn faster.
That’s why, when I work with someone in midlife, I always ask about their nights and their stress before I look at their plate. I wrote about eating through this time of life in How to eat when menopause hits.
What helps?
None of this asks you to eat less or give anything up. It’s about calming the circle, gently, from several sides.
1. Protect your sleep
Give your evening a slope instead of a cliff. Dim the lights in the last hour, put the phone in another room, have a warm shower, read a few pages of a book. Go to bed and get up at roughly the same time, even at weekends. Get outside in the morning light, even on grey days, because daylight helps set your inner clock for the night ahead. I shared more about this in Wake up happy: your circadian rhythm in winter.
2. Feed yourself steadily, especially after a bad night
This is where many people go wrong with the best intentions. After a poor night, or a heavy evening, they try to “make up for it” by eating less. But an underfed, tired body is exactly the body that craves sugar at four o’clock.
So on tired days, feed yourself with extra care. A breakfast with protein: eggs, or plain yoghurt with walnuts and a grated apple, or goat’s cheese on wholegrain bread. A real lunch: vegetables, some protein, healthy fats and carbs, like a bowl of lentil soup with a piece of cheese. And a proper snack in the afternoon if you’re hungry. I explain why in Why you need more food, not less and in The afternoon energy dip in autumn.
3. Calm your nervous system on purpose
Stress hormones are designed to be used up. Since you rarely run away from anything these days, you need other ways to tell your body that the danger has passed.
Your breath is the quickest. A few slow breaths, letting the out-breath be a little longer than the in-breath, gently press the brake on your nervous system. I shared five simple practices in Breathe your way to mindfulness. And if you’d like something deeper, autogenic training, which I teach, trains your body to let go by itself. You can read about it in Autogenic training: more than just a relaxation technique.
4. Move a little, every day
Movement is how your body uses up the tension it has gathered. It doesn’t need to be a workout. A brisk walk round the block after lunch, half an hour in the garden, a few stretches before bed. Moving in daylight helps your sleep too, so it does double duty.
5. Make the easy choice a nourishing one
On tired, stressed days, you’ll eat whatever is easiest. So make easy food kind food. A pot of soup in the fridge or freezer. Boiled eggs ready to peel. A tin of sardines and some good bread. Cooked lentils in a jar. Walnuts and apples in a bowl on the table. When the easy option nourishes you, you don’t need willpower at all.
What doesn’t help?
Eating less to make up for a bad night. It makes the cravings stronger.
Coffee all afternoon. It borrows tonight’s sleep to get you through today. Enjoy it in the morning.
A glass of wine to unwind every night. It may help you drop off, but it tends to make the second half of the night lighter and more broken.
Being hard on yourself. Guilt is one more stress, and stress is what started the circle.
Try this for one week
Keep a little notebook by your bed. Each evening, write down three things: how you slept last night (well, so-so, badly), how the day felt (calm, busy, stretched), and when the strongest craving came and what it was for.
Then add one small change, just one: perhaps a protein breakfast every morning, or a ten-minute walk after lunch, or three slow breaths before bed.
At the end of the week, read your notes with a cup of tea. Do your cravings follow your nights? Do the stretched days end at the fridge? Most people see the pattern straight away. And once you can see it, you know where to start.
Frequently asked questions
Can lack of sleep make you hungrier?
Yes. After a poor night, the signal that makes you hungry gets louder and the one that tells you you’ve had enough gets quieter, so you feel hungrier and crave quick, sweet food.
Why do I crave sugar when I’m stressed?
Stress puts your body on alert and releases sugar into your blood so you’re ready to act. Afterwards, your body wants to refill quickly, so it asks for sweet and comforting food.
Will I lose weight if I sleep better and stress less?
I can’t promise that, because every body is different. What I can say is that better sleep and a calmer nervous system make your appetite steadier, your cravings quieter and your energy better, which makes looking after yourself much easier.
When should I talk to my doctor?
If you’ve been sleeping badly for weeks, if you snore loudly or wake gasping, if you feel low or anxious most days, or if your weight changes a lot without an obvious reason, please talk to your doctor. The same goes for night sweats or hot flushes that disturb your sleep: there is help available.
Would you like some help?
Sleep, stress and appetite are part of everything I do in my group programmes in nutrition and health, such as Six Tuesdays in Montignac, because it’s so much easier to find calmer evenings together. If you’d like to hear when the next group opens, write to me at hello@catherinepolet.coach.
If you’d prefer to look at your own nights, days and cravings one to one, online, book a free 20-minute call. We’ll find the place in your circle where a small change makes the biggest difference.
About Catherine
I’m Catherine Polet, a holistic nutrition health coach, yoga and autogenic training teacher for more than 30 years, author and speaker. I help people find a way of eating and living that suits their own body, online in English, French, Spanish and German, and in person in Southwest France.
