She Thought She Had a Sweet Tooth. I Thought She Had a Broken Heart.

Stories from my practice. Names have been changed to protect my clients’ privacy. Every story is inspired by real experiences from my practice.

Sometimes the body tells a story long before we are ready to say the words out loud.

A few weeks ago I had an online session with Sarah. She was funny, successful, and one of those women who always seems to have everything under control. At least, that is how it looked from the outside.

“I know exactly what’s wrong with me,” she said. “I just have no willpower.”

I smiled and asked her to tell me more.

She could eat well all day, she said. Breakfast was healthy, lunch was healthy, she drank plenty of water and she even prepared her meals in advance. But every evening, usually around 8 o’clock, it started. Chocolate, biscuits, ice cream, anything sweet. “I know I shouldn’t,” she said, “but once I start, I can’t stop.”

Then she looked at me and said something that caught my attention.

“I’ve never really liked myself.”

There it was. Not the sugar, but the loneliness behind the sugar.

The pieces behind the craving

As we kept talking, more of the puzzle appeared. Sarah had spent most of her life trying to be good enough: Good enough at work, good enough as a mother, good enough at holding it all together on her own. She was always giving, always achieving, always taking care of everyone else. And she could not remember the last time she had shown that same kindness to herself.

During her Oberon session I also saw signs of an imbalance that often goes hand in hand with persistent sugar cravings: Candida albicans.

It is worth understanding this properly, because it is the piece that explains why willpower keeps losing. Candida albicans depends on carbon-based sugars, glucose and fructose above all, to grow and to build its cell wall. When it gets them in quantity it can shift from a rounded yeast cell into its filamentous hyphal form, which is the more invasive one. An overgrowth also disrupts the intestinal microbiome, and because your gut and your brain are in constant signalling contact, that disruption reaches appetite itself.

Which means the pull towards sugar is partly being generated inside your gut, not inside your character. Chronic stress and broken sleep make it harder for the body to hold that balance, so a cycle sets in: The more depleted you feel, the more you reach for comfort, the more of that comfort is sugar, and the further the gut environment drifts. Sarah was not failing at discipline. She was up against biology and exhaustion at the same time.

What if you are not weak?

It is easy to blame yourself when you are standing in front of the kitchen cupboard looking for something sweet. But what if you are not weak at all? What if you are simply trying to soothe something that has been hurting for years?

I see this more often than people realise: Women who do not need another diet, but who need someone to connect the dots. Sometimes that means supporting the gut. Sometimes it means gently asking a question nobody has asked before.

Who has been taking care of you?

By the end of our session Sarah was not talking about chocolate anymore. She was talking about how exhausted she was from trying to earn love by looking after everyone else, and that conversation changed far more than any diet ever could.

Because healing does not always begin with what is on your plate. Sometimes it begins with what has been weighing on your heart. That is also why I look at the whole picture rather than one symptom at a time.

Common questions

Why do I crave sugar in the evening but not during the day?

Because the evening is usually when the doing stops and the feeling starts. All day there is structure, tasks and other people to look after; at night the house goes quiet and whatever you have been carrying finally has room. Blood sugar and tiredness play their part, but for many women the timing is emotional as much as physical.

Is Candida the reason I cannot stop eating sugar?

It can be one part of it. Yeasts thrive on sugar, so an imbalance can keep the craving loop turning, and stress, sleep and years of putting yourself last usually sit underneath it as well. Looking at the whole pattern is what tends to shift things.

Does this mean I need more willpower?

In my experience the women who describe themselves as having no willpower are usually the most disciplined people I meet: They just spend all of it on everyone else. When the underlying need is met, the craving generally loosens on its own.