What Divorce Stress Does to Your Body — and How Food Can Help
If you've been lying awake at 3am with your brain running through legal paperwork, co-parenting logistics, the fear of whether you're going to be okay financially, and that stupid thing you said in a meeting last week — your body is not broken. It is doing exactly what bodies do under prolonged stress.
It is running on adrenaline. It is depleting its own reserves. And without support, it will eventually make itself heard.
I spoke with nutritionist Susie Allen from Your Vitality Nutrition about what actually happens inside your body during separation — and what you can do about it. Susie has been through two divorces herself, so this conversation was honest, practical, and deeply relatable.
The physical cost of holding everything together
Susie was frank: for most women, the stress of a relationship breakdown doesn't begin at separation. It builds slowly, sometimes over years.
"For me, the whole lead-up was just a nervous system roller coaster of constantly trying to survive," she said. "And I wasn't nutritionally nourished. I had to totally rebuild afterwards because I had used up everything I had inside me."
From the outside, many women look completely fine during this period. They show up for work, manage school logistics, keep things calm for the children. Inside, they are running on empty — and the body keeps a record of all of it.
Susie also shared that she was heavily masking during her first divorce — before she knew she had ADHD. Masking, for neurodivergent people, is the exhausting process of suppressing natural tendencies to meet social expectations. But she was quick to point out that it isn't only a neurodivergent experience.
"It's also a female thing," she said. "Don't make yourself too big. Don't take up too much space." Most of us were raised with some version of that message, and separation tends to amplify it.
Running on adrenaline — and why it’s not sustainable
A little stress is normal. The body is designed to handle it. The problem is when stress becomes chronic — when the nervous system stays in fight-or-flight mode for months or years without relief.
Susie describes the effect clearly: weight gain or loss, gut issues, hormonal disruption, recurrent illness, and — perhaps most recognisably — being completely wired but utterly exhausted at the same time.
"You end up with this wired and tired person," she said. "You get to bed and the anxiety kicks in. When you've been running on adrenaline all day and the quietness hits, the thoughts come in."
Then the executive function starts to erode. You can't make good decisions for yourself because you're overtired, and making one more choice — even a healthy one — feels like one thing too many.
The result is a cycle: high stress depletes nutrients, poor nutrition worsens mood and resilience, and exhaustion makes healthy choices harder to access. Breaking that cycle is where food comes in.
What food has to do with it
This is the part that surprised me when I first heard it framed this way: food isn't just fuel. For a body under stress, it is a signal of safety.
"By being very strategic about how we're eating and what we're eating, we can make sure that our bodies know it's safe to be here," Susie explained. "Because our world is not necessarily feeling very safe right now."
From a biological perspective, our neurotransmitters — dopamine (reward and motivation), serotonin (mood stabilisation) — need nutritional building blocks to exist. They don't appear from nowhere. Without consistent nourishment, the brain simply has less to work with.
Add perimenopause into the mix — which many women going through separation will be navigating simultaneously — and the question of whether it's hormones or the divorce becomes irrelevant. The answer is both, and nutrition supports both.
Susie Allen is a nutritionist and founder of Your Vitality Nutrition.
The practical bit: what to actually eat (the non-sad version)
1. Start with protein — especially at breakfast
Protein is the building block for nearly everything: hormones, neurotransmitters, energy regulation. Susie recommends getting protein in within 30 to 60 minutes of waking, and — crucially — before coffee.
"Coffee is going to take you up here," she said, "when we already want everything to be calm. That's where resilience comes from."
Protein at breakfast doesn't have to be complicated. A couple of babybel cheeses with yoghurt, a tin of tuna, scrambled eggs, or even some cheese on toast is a meaningful starting point. Fed is better than not fed — but the combination of protein and consistency makes a real difference to energy, mood, and hunger throughout the day.
2. Include fibre — for more reasons than you think
Fibre supports gut health, and the gut-brain connection is well established. A healthy microbiome contributes to better mental health, better energy, and better resilience.
The goal Susie often shares with clients is 30 different plant foods across the week. It sounds ambitious until you realise that spices, herbs, seeds, and nuts all count. A shake of a spice mix over dinner might add two or three varieties without any extra effort.
Eating the rainbow isn't just a cliché — it's about giving the body the breadth of phytonutrients it needs to function.
3. Think about timing
Ideally, leave four to five hours between meals to allow the body to rest and digest. More importantly, try to finish eating at least three hours before bed.
"Our bodies need to relax," Susie said. "Late eating — especially anything high in sugar or carbohydrates — causes our liver to work harder overnight and our cortisol levels to spike. And that cortisol spike at 3am is exactly what wakes most women up."
4. The 3am wake-up — and what's really happening
Cortisol follows a natural rhythm that rises in the early hours of the morning. Under chronic stress, cortisol levels are already elevated — so when that natural rise happens, it's enough to pull you awake. Your mind then does the rest.
Susie's suggestions for improving sleep from a nutritional angle:
Prioritise protein throughout the day to keep blood sugar stable
Reduce sugar at night, including alcohol
Try to eat your last meal before 8pm if possible
Get five to ten minutes of morning sunlight without sunglasses — this starts the melatonin cycle and supports evening sleepiness
Practice box breathing before bed: breathe in for four counts, hold for four, out for four, hold for four
It starts in the morning. The choices you make at 7am have a direct effect on how easily you fall asleep at 10pm.
What about comfort food?
This is the part of the conversation that felt the most liberating for me.
Susie's approach isn't deprivation. It's strategy. If you're going to a party and there's a buffet table, eat the cheese first. (Oh no, eat the cheese!? Best. Homework. Ever.)
Having that protein gives your body something grounding before the birthday cake arrives. Rather than avoiding what you enjoy, make sure you've had what you need first.
For potato lovers (I'm in this camp too) — there's genuinely good news. Cooking potatoes, rice, or pasta the day before and refrigerating them overnight changes their chemical composition. They become resistant starch, which feeds the gut microbiome and is absorbed differently by the body. Smashed potatoes made from chilled spuds. A warm bowl of leftover rice with protein on top. Comfort food that also does something useful.
"Food works on so many different levels," Susie said. "It's a cellular thing, but it's a soul thing too." Eating a slice of cake without guilt — especially when you've spent years having your choices scrutinised — can itself be an act of reclaiming yourself.
A word on alcohol
Alcohol is a reality for many women going through separation, and Susie was pragmatic about it rather than prescriptive.
From a biological perspective, alcohol is a form of sugar and disrupts sleep quality even if it helps you fall asleep faster. It also becomes harder to metabolise from around the age of 40 to 45, as the body's enzyme capacity declines — which explains why many women in this season notice they feel the effects far more than they used to.
"If that is your way of doing things for now, just be mindful of it," she said. Try to eat something with it. Notice if it's becoming a pattern. And consider whether there's something else that could help you decompress.
The core point: alcohol quiets the noise temporarily, but the problems are still there tomorrow — and sleep deprivation makes everything harder to manage. No judgement on how you get through, but you make the call on what sort of discomfort you can tolerate and the results you want to see. Also, don’t beat yourself up. What you’re doing is really hard and you don’t have to do it perfectly.
What stress does to your nutrients
Here's something many women we talk to don't realise: stress doesn't just affect your mood. It literally depletes the nutrients in your body. Magnesium and B vitamins in particular are consumed at a faster rate when the nervous system is under pressure.
Magnesium is involved in roughly 600 processes in the body — from energy production to immunity to sleep. B vitamins are critical for mental health, resilience, and the ability to cope with daily demands. Both are found in nuts, seeds, leafy vegetables, and meat proteins. Both are candidates for supplementation during high-stress periods, always with guidance from a health professional.
"Our bodies are revving an engine," Susie explained, "and that uses up fuel."
When you have no time or energy to cook
Susie's ebook Suddenly Single was written specifically for women in this situation, and her advice is refreshingly practical. Here are some of the simplest options she recommends:
A rotisserie chicken from the supermarket — pull it apart and it covers three to four meals with veggies and complex carbs
Tinned tuna, tinned chickpeas, or hummus with pre-cut vegetables
Scrambled eggs or tinned beans on toast
Yoghurt and frozen berries
Frozen vegetables — nutritionally equivalent to fresh and much easier to grab when you’ve got nothing in the tank
Pre-cut vegetables from the fresh produce section — yes, they cost more, but sometimes that’s the difference between a healthy meal and ordering a pizza (also, sometimes it’s totally okay to order the pizza)
"There's no such thing as breakfast, lunch, or dinner food," Susie said. "It's just food." If yoghurt and berries is what you have the energy for at 6pm, that is a perfectly valid dinner.
One thing to do tomorrow
If you're reading this while feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and stretched thin (well done for getting this far, you’re doing so great!) — Susie's suggestion is simple.
Drink water. Aim for around 35ml per kilogram of body weight throughout the day. That’s around 2.1L for a 60kg person, 2.8L for an 80kg person, and 3.5L for a 100kg person, for example. Have a breakfast with protein. And then stop for a moment and acknowledge that you did something for yourself today.
"This is the one thing I can do for myself today," she said. "Nobody else right now is going to do it for me. And then we go from surviving, to building, to thriving."
That's the revenge glow. And it starts with breakfast.
___________________________________________________________________
I spoke to Susie on an episode of my podcast Divorce With Carolyn. You can listen to the full episode on your favourite platform by following this link.
Susie Allen is a nutritionist and founder of Your Vitality Nutrition. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook @yourvitalitynutrition (her socials are so great - highly recommend you follow for great nutrition tips and quite a few laughs as well). Her ebook Suddenly Single is available on her website, or it’s free for members of Women’s Divorce Academy.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute medical, nutritional, or dietary advice. Please consult a qualified health professional for personalised support.
