What I wish I knew about food when my marriage ended

There's a moment, usually somewhere in the first few weeks, when you find yourself standing in the kitchen at 9pm, staring into the fridge, with absolutely no idea what you want or whether you even care.

You might be eating nothing. Or eating everything. Or surviving on coffee, toast, and the occasional glass of wine that feels like the only thing that actually helps.

I've been there. Twice, actually. And what I know now, that I desperately wish I'd known then, is that food is one of the most powerful tools you have for getting through this.

Not in a prescriptive, punishing way. Not as another thing to be perfect at. But as a way to tell your body: I see you. I'm here. We're going to be okay.

Why your body is struggling right now

Separation and divorce are among the most acutely stressful experiences a human being can go through. Your nervous system responds to that stress the same way it responds to any perceived threat: it floods your body with cortisol and adrenaline and puts you on high alert.

That's why meal planning feels impossible. That's why you're exhausted but can't sleep. That's why you keep forgetting things, snapping at your kids, lying awake at 3am with your heart racing.

You're not failing. You're not falling apart. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And understanding that changes everything.

Here's what most people don't realise: your nervous system runs on nutrients. Every stress response, every attempt to stay calm, every thought you think requires specific vitamins, minerals, and amino acids to function. And when you're under this level of sustained stress, you burn through those nutrients at an accelerated rate.

Magnesium. B vitamins. Vitamin C. Zinc. Iron. You're depleting them faster than you can replace them, which is why everything feels harder than it should.

Food sends safety signals to your brain

This is the part that genuinely shifted things for me when I finally understood it.

When you eat regular, nourishing meals, you're doing something very specific to your nervous system: you're telling it there's enough. You're safe. You're not in famine. And that signal, repeated consistently over days and weeks, actually helps move you out of fight-or-flight mode and into a state where your body can start to heal.

Something as simple as protein at breakfast, three eggs, Greek yoghurt with nuts, leftover chicken, can stabilise your blood sugar, reduce anxiety, improve focus, and start that cascade. It's not magic. It's biochemistry.

And the reverse is also true. Skip breakfast, grab a coffee and something sweet mid-morning, crash by 2pm, feel your anxiety spike, eat whatever's easiest at dinner, wake at 3am wired and unsettled. That rollercoaster has a nutritional driver, and it has a nutritional solution alongside targeted lifestyle glow ups.

The phases nobody talks about

One of the things I think about a lot in my work with women going through separation is that there are different nutritional needs at different stages of the process, and they're quite different from each other.

In the early days, survival mode, the goal is not optimisation. It's just getting through. That looks like staying hydrated (dehydration makes anxiety, brain fog, and low mood significantly worse), eating something with protein even when you have no appetite, and not adding another layer of guilt about your food choices on top of everything else you're already carrying.

As things stabilise a little and you start to emerge from the fog, rebuilding mode, you can start to look at the deeper stuff. Gut health matters here more than most people realise: roughly 90% of serotonin, your calm, happy neurotransmitter, is made in the gut, not the brain. Poor gut health creates low serotonin, which creates anxiety and low mood, which makes everything harder. Supporting your gut microbiome with fibre, fermented foods, and polyphenol-rich colourful plants is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for your mental health during this time.

Sleep is another area where nutrition can make a meaningful difference. Magnesium glycinate is the supplement I recommend more than any other, partly because stress depletes it so rapidly, and partly because it supports sleep, muscle relaxation, nervous system regulation, and anxiety in ways that are genuinely evidence-backed. Blood sugar management matters too: if you're waking between 2 and 4am regularly, there's a good chance a blood sugar crash is part of what's waking you up.

And then there's thriving. When you're ready. When you start to feel glimpses of yourself again and you want to lean into that rather than just survive. That's when food can become something quite different: an act of self-love, a daily ritual of choosing yourself.

The perimenopause layer

If you're in your 40s or early 50s, there's often something else happening at the same time. The hormonal transition of perimenopause and the stress of separation interact in ways that can make both feel considerably worse.

Declining oestrogen directly increases insulin resistance. Sustained stress raises cortisol. Elevated cortisol disrupts progesterone. Add them together and you have a hormonal environment that can feel utterly overwhelming even when you're doing all the right things.

This isn't the place to go into the full detail of that interaction, but what I want you to know is: if you're exhausted in a way that feels different, anxious in a way that feels new, waking at 3am, gaining weight around your middle despite not eating more, those symptoms make complete sense given what's happening in your body. And they can be addressed.

Where to start today

If you take nothing else from this post, take these three things:

Drink more water. Dehydration compounds every single symptom you're experiencing. Start there.

Eat protein at breakfast. Three eggs, Greek yoghurt with nuts, smoked salmon, leftover chicken. Whatever you can manage. This one change has an outsized impact on blood sugar, anxiety, and energy for the whole day.

Be kind to yourself about the rest. Fed is best. If dinner tonight is cereal, that is okay. Tomorrow is a new day.

If you want to go deeper

I wrote the Suddenly Single eBook because I kept seeing the same patterns in my clinical practice, and in my own life, and I wanted to create something that actually met women where they are. Not a diet plan. Not another list of things to be perfect at. A practical, compassionate, genuinely useful guide for using nutrition to support your nervous system, your body, and your spirit through one of the hardest transitions there is.

It covers everything from survival-mode meal formulas and emergency grocery lists, to gut health and sleep support, to a dedicated perimenopause section, to simple batch-cook recipes that work in real life. All three phases. All of it grounded in both the clinical evidence and my own lived experience of going through this twice.

You can find it in my online shop for $27.

I also sat down with Carolyn Tate on her podcast Divorce with Carolyn to talk through a lot of these themes in more depth. It's episode 6 and you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you prefer to listen rather than read, it's a great place to start.

And if what you're experiencing feels bigger than a guide can hold, if you're struggling with sleep, anxiety, hormonal symptoms, or you just want someone to look at the full picture with you, I offer discovery calls (15 minutes free) and full consultations. You can book in via the "Book now" button above or drop me a message. There's no obligation, just a conversation.

You deserve more than just getting through this. You deserve to actually thrive on the other side.

Susie x