Episode 171: Is Your Chocolate Holding Your Marriage Together? | With Luis Mojica

8 hours ago
18 min read

‘Becoming conscious alchemists, when it comes to food, is what I want people to notice.’

— Luis Mojica

Food cravings are not willpower failures. They are your nervous system trying to meet unmet needs. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian and somatic nutritionist Luis Mojica break down the three categories of unmet needs driving food choices — emotional, relational, and nutritional — and how stimulants, depressants, and balancing foods each shape your stress response.

Key Takeaways

Food does not just numb stress — it can create a stress response. The adrenaline-glucose loop means every glucose spike triggers insulin, and insulin triggers adrenaline. Many people are running on stress hormones all day through what they eat — including foods they consider healthy — without knowing it. The question shifts from is this food good or bad, to how is this food affecting my nervous system state.
The three food categories — stimulants, depressants, and balancers — are a diagnostic lens, not a diet plan. What a person reaches for and when reveals their nervous system baseline — whether they are running on functional freeze, chronic anxiety, or something closer to regulation. A food journal read through this lens tells a clinical story.
Every craving is pointing to one of three unmet needs: emotional, relational, or nutritional. The nutritional dimension is the most overlooked — and the most likely to be mislabeled as emotional eating. Sometimes the body is simply asking for a specific nutrient it cannot get attention for any other way. Curiosity about which need is present replaces shame with information.
The question "What would happen if you didn't have this right now?" surfaces what the food has been quietly managing. States, relationships, histories the person did not know were connected to what they eat. Three women with a chocolate craving all said the same thing: I would have to leave my husband. That is not a nutrition problem. That is a life the nervous system is surviving.
Cold-turkey dietary changes almost always fail because they remove a regulation mechanism before the nervous system has an alternative. A drastic change registers as a physiological threat. Luis titrates in balancing foods slowly so that what the food was suppressing can surface gradually — at a pace the nervous system can actually work with.
Both stimulants and depressants create dissociation — through opposite pathways. Stimulants adrenalize the body up and out of sensation. Depressants create the heaviness of a food hangover, pulling blood flow from the brain to the gut. As balancing foods replace them, what was being dissociated from begins to surface. That emergence is not a sign something is wrong. It is the body finally having enough capacity to feel what it could not before.
Becoming a conscious alchemist with food means moving from automated survival responses to deliberate, informed choice. Without a good-bad framework, without willpower battles, without shame. The body has been doing exactly what it was organized to do. The goal is not to override it. The goal is to understand it well enough to give it something better.

Key Concepts

Food-induced stress: The physiological process where certain foods spike insulin, which triggers adrenaline, which keeps the body cycling through fight-or-flight.
Stimulants: Foods that create an immediate burst of adrenaline or dopamine, helping the body bypass a freeze or collapse state. Coffee is the most common example.
Depressants: Foods that slow the body and quiet anxiety by redirecting blood flow and sedating the system. Ice cream, cheese, and bread often function this way.
Balancers: Whole foods that nourish the cell without triggering a large adrenal response. Energy from balancers comes from nutrition, not from stress hormones.
Food sobriety: The practice of slowly shifting away from stimulant and depressant foods toward balancers, allowing the nervous system to meet the sensations it has been using food to avoid.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

[00:00] Introduction to food-induced stress

[02:30] Why Luis wrote Food Therapy — the gap he saw in the trauma and nutrition fields

[03:54] Why food can create a stress response — not just numb one

[04:54] Why does insulin trigger adrenaline — and what that means for chronic stress

[05:20] How do stimulants, depressants, and balancing foods each affect the nervous system?

[06:29] How a functional freeze pattern shows up in your food choices

[07:54] Why coffee energy is really adrenaline in disguise

[10:41] What are the three categories of unmet needs behind every food craving?

[18:13] What question unlocks the real unmet need behind a food pattern?

[20:34] What food addiction actually is through a nervous system lens

[23:07] Why cold-turkey dietary changes can feel like a threat to the body

[24:44] What "food sobriety" actually requires of the nervous system

[27:37] Why weight after trauma has biological logic — and what releasing it feels like

[28:56] The three answers Luis kept hearing when he asked women about chocolate

[30:11] Inside Luis's book Food Therapy — who he wrote it for and the one question it all comes down to

Notable Quotes

Luis Mojica

Educational

— On why the three food categories work without biochemistry knowledge: "I put foods into three categories — stimulants, depressants, and balancers. I did that so they wouldn't have to understand biochemistry — so they could just get it from a felt sense."

— On why dietary change triggers withdrawal: "When you start eating balancing foods, you gain food sobriety. And you will go through withdrawal. This is why people rebound and can't stay on a diet."

Insightful

— On how comfort eating creates the very loop it is trying to escape: "You're prolonging and reenacting cycles of stress and trauma response just from trying to comfort stress and trauma response. So it becomes this closed loop."

— On the moment food therapy was born: "I stopped telling them what to do and started asking what would happen if you didn't. This entire world came into the therapy room."

Clinical

— On reading the nervous system baseline through food journals: "Clients would come in and I would say, show me your journal. And I would see throughout the day — stimulant at 1 p.m., stimulant at 3 p.m., depressant at 8 p.m. And it would give me a sense of where their baseline was."

— On what food addiction reveals about nervous system state: "I don't focus on someone's food addiction. I see a compulsive chronic use of a certain food that gives you a certain effect — and that tells me you're trying to manage something with the effect."

Inspirational

— On the one question that reframes everything: "How is your food supporting you? This seems really simple, and I think it needs to be really simple — because food is complex."

— On giving people back their own authority: "I want people to feel their body as the barometer. Then you don't need me, you don't need my book, you don't need anything. You can just come right back to yourself."

Dr. Aimie Apigian

Educational

— On what a craving is actually doing for the nervous system: "What you think is a bad habit may actually be your nervous system finding a way to survive your day, your marriage, your unhappiness, your overcommitments, your overwhelm."

— On the question that reveals what food is managing: "What would happen if you didn't have this (food) right now? That is where it clarifies what the unmet need is — and how you are using this. What are you using this to accomplish right now in your inner state?"

Insightful

— On what curiosity about food revealed about her own history: "As I think back on the years I spent binge eating, I was able to become curious about how much of that was actually nutritional — because I had assumed all of it was emotional and relational. That brought so much compassion for me — to realize some of this is just my body needs a certain nutrient and it's not getting enough of that."

— On why labeling a food problem misses the point entirely: "Let's get curious about this. Not just label it as you have a chocolate problem. Because it's so much deeper — and we're missing the real value of what we really want to be talking about in a person's life."

Clinical

— On the question she asks every autoimmune patient: "When I started to realize that autoimmunity was really a reflection of a nervous system that was terrified — I started asking: what is happening in your life right now that makes you terrified? Not just scared. Not just anxious. Terrified."

— On why cold turkey is a biological shock not a discipline failure: "I am surprised that anyone has ever been able to stop anything cold turkey — because of the impact on the nervous system and the shock that it creates to your physiology."

Inspirational

— On what understanding food through a nervous system lens gives back: "There's so much agency that a person can regain in their life when they understand how this food is supporting them — and not just feel like they're at the mercy of their cravings and the unmet needs that call to them to be met."

Episode Takeaway

As a physician, I've worked with patients across addiction medicine and chronic illness, and what has stayed with me is how early and how deeply food becomes a survival strategy. Most people I meet have been told they have a willpower problem. What I see in their biology tells a different story — a nervous system that learned to use food to regulate itself when nothing else was available.

What Luis brings forward in this conversation is the science I see in my clinic: the adrenaline cascade that follows every insulin spike, the way a "healthy" diet can still keep someone in fight-or-flight, and the specific unmet needs that food is meeting in the background. This aligns directly with the Biology of Trauma® framework — the body is not sabotaging you. It is using the tools it has.

This matters because so many people who come to my work have spent years treating the symptom — the cravings, the weight, the food patterns — without ever being offered a map of what the symptom is doing for them biologically. When the map changes, the relationship with food changes. Each craving becomes a piece of information. Each meal becomes a way to support or stress the nervous system, consciously.

The next time you feel the pull of a specific food — the mid-afternoon sugar, the late-night cheese, the morning coffee you can't start the day without — pause for a moment. Ask one question: how is this food supporting me right now? Listen to what comes. You don't have to change anything yet. You are simply beginning the practice of meeting your body's wisdom where it already is.

Chapters 9 and 15 of my book go deeper into two pieces of this. Chapter 9 covers the patterns of stored trauma in our behaviors - like our food choices. Chapter 15 covers the biochemistry of dysregulation, including the adrenaline aspect Luis and I walked through here.

If this episode opened a new lens on your relationship with food, share it with someone who has a complicated relationship with food too. And if you want the full map of how food, biochemistry, and the nervous system weave together, Luis's book Food Therapy pairs well with The Biology of Trauma — they cover different angles of the same terrain.

Resources/Guides:

Food Therapy by Luis Mojica: Conscious Eating to Navigate Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma
Luis Mojica's website — For more on somatic nutrition and reading your body's response to food
Book: The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian — Chapter 9 covers the patterns of stored trauma in our behaviors, and Chapter 15 covers the biochemistry of dysregulation explored in this episode

Related Podcast Episodes:

About the Guest:

Luis Mojica is a Somatic Educator, certified in Holistic Nutrition, Somatic Experiencing, and Life Coaching. With years of experience working at the intersection of trauma and healing, Luis has become a sought-after teacher and speaker in his field. He reaches thousands of students annually through his online courses and webinars, and hosts the Holistic Life Navigation Podcast. Learn more at www.holisticlifenavigation.com or by following @holistic.life .navigation on Instagram.

Your host: Dr. Aimie Apigian is a double board-certified physician in Preventive and Addiction Medicine, author of the national bestselling book The Biology of Trauma (foreword by Gabor Maté) and the founder of the Biology of Trauma^® framework that transforms our understanding of how the body experiences and holds trauma. She holds master's degrees in biochemistry and public health. After foster-adopting a child during medical school sparked her journey, she desperately sought for answers that would only continue as she developed chronic health issues. Through her Biology of Trauma^® practitioner training, podcast, YouTube channel, and international speaking, Dr. Aimie bridges functional medicine, attachment science, and trauma therapy — with a focus on facilitating accelerated repair of trauma's impact on the mind, body, and biology.

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Why Your Food Cravings Aren't a Willpower Problem: The Biology of Unmet Needs

Most people have been told that food cravings are a willpower issue. Eat less sugar. Make better choices. Try harder. But what if the craving was never the problem — what if it was a signal pointing to something deeper the nervous system has been trying to communicate?

In a recent Biology of Trauma® podcast conversation, Dr. Aimie Apigian spoke with somatic nutritionist Luis Mojica about the biology underneath food cravings. Three unmet needs. Three food categories. And one question that changes the relationship between food and body: how is this food supporting me right now?

What is food-induced stress?

Food-induced stress is the body's adrenaline response to insulin spikes, keeping the nervous system in fight-or-flight even when no external threat exists.

It is the physiological cascade that happens when certain foods spike blood sugar, trigger an insulin response, and release adrenaline. The result is a stress response in the body — even from foods that look healthy on paper.

Most conversations about food and the body focus on insulin. The fuller story includes adrenaline. Every insulin spike is followed by an adrenaline release, because adrenaline is what liberates stored sugar from the liver when blood glucose drops too quickly after a spike.

That matters, because it means food can drive the same stress response a person is trying to calm. A fight-or-flight pattern that feels emotional on the surface may have a biochemical root sitting underneath every meal.

Why a "healthy" diet can still keep you in fight-or-flight

Healthy foods that spike blood sugar still trigger the insulin-adrenaline loop, activating the stress response regardless of how clean the ingredients are.

This is the piece that surprises most people. A diet labeled "clean" or "whole food" can still produce large glucose swings if the balance tips toward high-carb plant foods and low protein. Those swings trigger the same insulin-adrenaline loop as a processed snack.

Luis describes this as the closed loop that keeps people cycling. A person feels stressed. The body reaches for food to quiet the stress. The food spikes glucose. The body releases adrenaline. The stress response the person was trying to numb is renewed from the inside.

For someone with a chronic functional freeze pattern — low energy, flatness, difficulty mobilizing — stimulants bypass the freeze by flooding the body with the activation it cannot generate on its own. Coffee is the obvious example. Sugar and chocolate produce the same effect.

The three categories of unmet needs behind food cravings

In Luis's framework, most cravings are driven by one of three unmet needs - emotional, relational and nutritional.

Emotional unmet needs. The craving is trying to fulfill a feeling state — comfort, joy, pleasure, a sense of being soothed. These are sensational cravings. They change the way a person feels in the next few minutes.

Relational unmet needs. The craving is tied to a person, an archetype, or a memory of being cared for. Someone says they eat ice cream and it feels like a hug from their father. Oatmeal with cinnamon carries the presence of a grandmother. The food holds a connection the nervous system has no other way to access.

Nutritional unmet needs. The body is actually missing something — a nutrient, a macronutrient, a mineral. The craving is the only signal available to get your attention. For Luis, the shift from grains to animal protein resolved symptoms that felt like chronic Lyme. Bloating, depression, and a kind of brain dehydration eased once the body received the protein it was asking for.

Most cravings are a mix. The clinical value comes from asking which need is loudest, and which has been ignored the longest.

Stimulants, depressants, and balancers — a different way to look at food

Rather than sorting food into "good" and "bad," Luis uses three physiological categories a person can identify through a felt sense in the body.

Stimulants produce an immediate burst of energy through adrenaline or dopamine. Coffee is the classic example. Sugar, chocolate, and highly processed carbs work the same way. They are what most people use to get through a functional freeze.

Depressants slow the nervous system, quiet anxiety, and redirect blood flow in a way that feels sedating. Bread, cheese, ice cream, and heavy starches often function this way. They are what most people reach for when the baseline is anxious or activated.

Balancers provide sustained energy from nutrition — not from a stress hormone surge. Whole vegetables, quality protein, and slow-release carbohydrates fall here. Energy from balancers feels clear and steady. Energy from stimulants and depressants feels jittery or sluggish.

Stimulants and depressants both create a level of dissociation — the former by over-activating the nervous system, the latter by dampening it. Balancers keep a person in their body.

Why adrenaline is the story, not cortisol

Adrenaline releases within seconds of every blood sugar drop, driving the food-stress loop faster than cortisol and making it the primary hormone to address.

Cortisol gets most of the attention in stress physiology. It is easier to measure, easier to write about, and easier to market supplements against. The faster, more immediate stress hormone driving the food-stress loop is adrenaline.

Adrenaline is released from the adrenal medulla within seconds of a blood sugar drop. Its role is to liberate stored glucose from the liver and maintain energy availability. Every insulin spike from a high-carb meal is followed by an adrenaline release when that glucose is pulled out of circulation.

This matters for people working on chronic stress, anxiety, or a functional freeze pattern. A nervous system cannot quiet biochemically if the food being eaten keeps calling adrenaline back into the bloodstream every ninety minutes. The interventions people typically reach for — meditation, breath work, nervous system practices — all work better on a biochemistry that is not being re-activated by the meal that came before.

How food creates dissociation (and why it feels like comfort)

One of the more clinically important pieces of Luis's framework is his observation that comfort eating is often dissociative eating. The "comfort" is the body leaving itself.

When adrenaline floods the system, attention lifts out of the body and into action — the classic stimulant experience. When a heavy carb meal pulls blood flow toward the gut, cognitive capacity drops and the body feels heavy. This is the food hangover people describe.

For a body carrying unresolved trauma, dissociation feels safe. It is the state the nervous system has learned to return to when sensations become too loud. Stimulants and depressants both provide reliable access to that state. This is a large part of why compulsive food patterns are so difficult to shift with willpower alone — the body is not trying to eat. It is trying to leave.

Why losing weight can feel emotionally destabilizing

There is an often-missed layer to insulin: every time it moves glucose out of the bloodstream, it primarily deposits that glucose into fat cells. A pattern of frequent insulin spikes is also a pattern of ongoing fat storage.

When someone reduces stimulants and depressants, insulin levels drop. The body stops building new fat stores and begins using existing ones. Something physical releases from the body.

For a nervous system that laid down weight during a period of trauma, stress, or chronic overload, that weight often carries a symbolic function. It is protection. It is insulation. It is a layer between the self and the world.

The biochemical release of stored fat can therefore arrive with a wave of emotional exposure that has nothing to do with mood and everything to do with a body meeting sensations it has been holding inside that protective layer. This is why weight shifts so often destabilize people emotionally, and why the somatic piece of the work is not optional.

What food sobriety actually requires

Luis calls the shift to balancing foods "food sobriety." He chose the word carefully, because the nervous system treats the withdrawal as real.

When someone who has used food to manage a chronic stress state starts removing stimulants and depressants, two things happen in sequence. First, the body goes through a physiological adjustment — the adrenal surges quiet, insulin levels drop, inflammation begins to release. Second, the emotions and sensations the food has been muting begin to surface.

Cold-turkey changes can feel threatening to the nervous system precisely because they are. The body has adapted to a level of glucose, a level of stimulation, a level of sedation. A sudden change registers as a life threat, even when the conscious mind knows it is not.

The Biology of Trauma® framework points to a slower titrated approach. Titrate in balancers alongside the familiar foods. Let the nervous system meet the new state in tolerable doses. Build capacity for the sensations underneath rather than bulldozing through them.

The better question to ask your food

The shift out of a willpower frame begins with a different question. Ask: how is this food supporting me right now?

Dr. Aimie points out that a related question — "what would happen if I didn't have this right now?" — is often the question that clarifies the unmet need. In Luis's practice, asking that question to clients with chronic chocolate use surfaced answers no food plan would ever touch: "I'd leave my husband." "I couldn't get through the day." "I wouldn't have a way to shut off my thoughts."

These are not chocolate problems at their root. They are nervous system patterns that chocolate has been quietly solving.

When the question changes, the entire relationship with food changes. It becomes diagnostic rather than moral. Each craving becomes a piece of information about what the body is trying to meet. Each meal becomes a way to support or stress the nervous system — and the person gets to be the one making that call consciously.

What to do with all of this

The shift begins with observation, not elimination. Before removing any food, spend a few days noticing what the body does in the two hours after each meal. When does energy rise? When does it drop? When does a person feel clear, and when do they feel foggy? Where in the day do the cravings show up, and what state is the body in when they arrive?

The next step is introducing balancing foods alongside what is already being eaten — not instead of. A handful of steamed greens with lunch. A protein source at breakfast. An omega-3 source at dinner. The nervous system meets the new state slowly, in doses it can handle.

Over weeks, the proportions shift on their own. The stimulants and depressants become less automatic, because the state they were compensating for is no longer running in the same way. The body begins to source energy from nutrition rather than from stress hormones. That is where calm aliveness begins to return.

The larger picture

Food patterns rarely sit alone. They live inside a web of stored stress, adrenal output, mitochondrial capacity, and attachment patterns that shape how the nervous system responds to almost everything. Shifting food without addressing that web often leaves people feeling worse, not better.

The Biology of Trauma® framework holds food as one piece of a larger sequence, alongside somatic practice, biochemistry support, and the nervous system work that precedes it. The goal is to understand what the food has been doing, give the body other ways to meet the same need, and let the food return to simply feeding the person.

Your cravings are information. Your body is your barometer. And the question that starts it all is the one Luis kept returning to: how is this food supporting me right now?

FAQ

Why do I crave chocolate or sweets when I'm stressed? Stress cravings typically signal one of three unmet needs — emotional, relational, or nutritional. Sweets and carb-rich foods spike blood sugar, trigger insulin, and release adrenaline, creating a physiological state the body reads as familiar and temporarily comforting. The craving is a signal pointing to what the nervous system is actually asking for.

What's the difference between stimulant, depressant, and balancing foods? Stimulants (coffee, sugar, chocolate) spike adrenaline and temporarily override a freeze or collapse state. Depressants (bread, cheese, ice cream) redirect blood flow and slow the nervous system. Balancers (whole foods, protein, vegetables) fuel the cell without large adrenal surges. Stimulants and depressants both create dissociation; balancers support a regulated, embodied state.

Can food really keep me in fight-or-flight? Yes. Every significant blood sugar spike — roughly every 90 minutes on a high-carb diet — triggers adrenaline release from the adrenal medulla to liberate stored sugar from the liver. This happens with every significant blood sugar spike, including from foods that look healthy. Over time, a diet high in stimulants and depressants keeps the nervous system cycling through survival states.

Why does cutting out sugar feel so physically and emotionally hard? The body has adapted to the level of sugar, fat, and stimulation it has been getting. A drastic change can feel like a physiological threat, even when the mind knows the body is safe. Emotions and sensations previously managed through food also begin to surface. The nervous system experiences it as withdrawal, not just change.

Is there a connection between food cravings and trauma? Often, yes. Compulsive food patterns frequently coexist with chronic stress or unresolved trauma. The body reaches for foods that produce a predictable physiological state — a state that feels safer than what the nervous system is carrying underneath. Food patterns usually shift once the underlying nervous system pattern is addressed.

Helpful Research

1. Donath, M. Y., & Shoelson, S. E. (2011). Type 2 diabetes as an inflammatory disease. Nature Reviews Immunology, 11(2), 98–107. This review traces how insulin dysregulation is linked to inflammation at the tissue level, not just blood sugar. It provides the mechanistic backbone for Luis's observation that repeated insulin spikes create ongoing physiological stress in the body, not only metabolic consequences.

2. Naviaux, R. K. (2014). Metabolic features of the cell danger response. Mitochondrion, 16, 7–17. Dr. Naviaux's Cell Danger Response describes how cells shift into a protective metabolic state in response to perceived threat and remain there until safety signals arrive. This framework helps explain why food patterns that produce predictable physiological states become so difficult to shift — the cell itself is participating in the protection.

3. Kuring, J. K., Mathias, J. L., Ward, L., & Tachas, G. (2023). Inflammatory markers in persons with clinically-significant depression, anxiety or PTSD: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 168, 279–292. This meta-analysis of 64 studies documents the consistent link between inflammatory markers and depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Because food-induced adrenaline cascades contribute to low-grade systemic inflammation, the nutritional piece of mood work sits alongside the biochemical piece.

Disclaimer: By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use this podcast as medical, psychological, or mental health advice to treat any medical or psychological condition in yourself or others. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your own physician, therapist, psychiatrist, or other qualified health provider regarding any physical or mental health issues you may be experiencing.

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