How to Stop Stress Snacking After Work

You get home after a long day, and before you even put your bag down, you are standing in the kitchen eating something that you don't even want. After work stress snacking. Here's the thing, my friend, you are not alone. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not weak. You're not undisciplined. You just never learned how to close out your workday. By the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly why the cravings hit so hard after work. What your body is actually asking for, and the one 15-minute shift that can break this cycle for good. Let's get into this episode. Girl, if you're tired of losing the same 20 pounds over and over and over again, listen up. For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept promising this time would be different, only to find myself stress eating at the kitchen counter after a long stressful day. I thought the problem was my body. I thought the problem was the diet I was on or my lack of discipline. But the truth? The real problem wasn't what I was doing. It was who I was being. When I finally stopped trying to fix my weight and started transforming my identity, everything changed. No more starting over on Monday. No more food guilt. No more feeling like I was fighting against myself. And now that's exactly what I help my clients do. Welcome to Stop Dieting Forever, the podcast that helps you break free from self-sabotage, rewire your mindset, and reinvent yourself into the healthy, confident woman that you crave to be. I'm your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, certified life and weight loss coach, and I'm here to show you how to finally stop dieting forever. You ready? Let's dive in. Okay, we're going to talk about stress snacking today, my friend. We're talking about stress snacking not at lunch, not in the afternoon. I'm talking specifically in that time after work into the evening, in that after work to evening transition. You know, the stop you make on the way home, or the snacks that you keep in the glove compartment in your car, the snacks that you are munching on at the counter before you've even changed your clothes when you come home from work, the snacks that you are for in the pantry as soon as you walk out of your home office, hoping that nobody else in your family sees what you're doing. And the worst part is you're not even hungry. Like, you know what to eat. You've known what to do for years. And that is not the problem. The problem is that you've had a full, hard, overwhelming workday stacked on top of the one you had the day before and the one you had before that and the one you had before that. And the fastest, most familiar way to get relief from that stress of the day is food. Food, our snacky foods. It's convenient, it's immediate, it's an immediate relief, and your brain has been trained to go there automatically. Automatically. This is how stress snacking can keep 10 pounds on you easy without even noticing. So let's talk about why this exists, because you know stress snacking is not helping you with your weight loss goal. Like, logically, you get it, but you cannot break that habit. Here's the thing, and here's what I have seen after coaching hundreds of women since 2014. Many of y'all are running at full capacity the moment you wake up. You're going from task to task, from meeting to meeting, from problem to problem. And you never stop to ask yourself, how are— how am I feeling? And it's not because you don't care, because of course you care how you're feeling, but you're not thinking about it because you have too much stuff to do. You're moving too fast. And when you can't name what you're actually feeling, your brain is going to default to the easiest relief available, and that is food. That is our little favorite snack. That is our little treat. That's our nice little pour of Pinot Grigio at the end of a day. When you default to food and alcohol for relief, this is what I call emotional literacy— illiteracy, not emotional literacy. I want you to become emotionally literate, but what you're experiencing is emotional illiteracy. And it is not a character, character flaw. I know how smart you are. I know how many degrees you have. I know how many initials you have after your name. This is not what they taught you when you got your MBA. Nobody taught us anything about naming emotions. But here's the thing, LuxeLifer, for women over 40, there is also something that is happening in your body that is making it even worse. These cravings come on even stronger and even harder. Over 40, your estrogen is doing what? It's declining. And when your estrogen declines, your cravings, they intensify. I know, blame it on the hormones. And the type of craving that you're having is actually telling you something. So I want you to listen closely because it's going to give you some data about what could be possibly happening physically in your body. So if you are always reaching for something sweet or something sugary, that is often your body trying to manage emotional cognitive load, emotional fatigue, or that brain fog that comes with fluctuating hormones. That brain fog is, ooh, It is hard to deal with, especially when you are a high-performer, high-achieving woman, and you can't think of why you open up this tab and what you're supposed to be doing with this email. It's difficult. But if you, if you find yourself reaching for the sugary and the sweet treats, that could be because you're trying to manage mental fatigue and the brain fog. Now, if you are a salty-crunchy girl, and you're looking for the high-fat treats, the high-fat comfort foods, the ones that help you, like, help you feel the release of the tension in your jaw, like with hard pretzels or tortilla chips or potato chips, Doritos, if that's your go-to snack, that is frequently a cortisol response that is telling you that you're got a lot of stress happening. There's a lot of cortisol flowing through your body. And when you're in perimenopause and you're sleeping not great, that also strikes your cortisol on top of having a stressful day at work. And so high cortisol is going to drive this urge to eat salty, crunchy, high-fat comfort foods. Now, if chocolate is your thing and you always need a little piece of chocolate in the evening— that was, that was me, always needing, having some chocolate nearby— chocolate is interesting because it contains magnesium in addition to the sugar. but your magnesium gets depleted during hormonal transitions. And so your body's literally seeking what it is missing when you're craving that chocolate. So this is exactly these cravings. I experience all of these cravings based on what my hormones were doing. So this is why I've added inside of Forever Well Private Weight Loss and Life Coaching, we do Hair Trace Mineral Analysis testing, and I also do a full hormonal panel workup with our clients every 90 days. With our telehealth partner, Joy and Blokes. So you will be getting a full panel, blood panel done. You review it with a professional, a medical professional. We take those results and then we fill in the gaps, what you are missing hormonally. Because when your hormones are settled, the cravings will settle too. The functional piece and the emotional piece are both real. And you need to address both if you want to be able to lose weight and keep it off and stop dieting forever. So let's talk about the emotional side. I talked a little bit about emotional illiteracy, but that is real, y'all. I mean, it sounds funny, like, ooh, I'm emotionally illiterate. Yeah, it is serious. But once you become literate with your emotions, it can change your life. Identifying your emotions is a skill. Knowing what they feel like in your body is a skill. Knowing and being aware of how these different emotions show up in different areas of your life, in your relationships, in your work, in your quiet time with yourself. That is a learned skill, and that skill becomes honed inside of the coaching container. So here's where the work breaks down. You close out your tasks for the day. You review your to-do list for tomorrow. So you're on top of things when you go to work tomorrow. You prep for everything that's coming up for the next day, but you never close out how you're feeling. At the end of your workday. So every unprocessed emotion from your workday gets carried straight into your second shift, into the evening. I call the second shift for my moms, cuz you come home from work, you close your laptop, and then you have to go to your second job, which is tending to your family. And what happens when you don't process the emotion from your workday You end up eating the little leftovers, the chicken nuggets and the french fries that are left on your kid's plate at dinner. You end up eating, standing at the counter at 7 PM, spooning out leftovers from the casserole because you're still hungry, or you think you're still hungry, right? You're creeping down to the pantry at 8 PM to grab some Girl Scout cookies hoping nobody sees you. You're not hungry because you just had dinner. You're not hungry, but you are carrying the whole day in your body and your body's looking for relief. And the only thing that you know how to do is to get immediate relief is to eat. So here's the simple fix. 15 minutes. I teach this to all of my high achieving, high performing clients. It's called the after-work transition time, the after-work transition time. It is a non-negotiable block at the end of your workday before your evening shift begins, before the evening begins. Here's how it works. First thing I want you to do, close out your day, right? You're looking at what you accomplished for the day. You're looking at your tasks, you're looking at your to-do list, you're reviewing what's on deck for tomorrow. And most of y'all are probably already doing this part because you want to be prepared when you open up your laptop and fire up your computer the next day. So, keep doing that, right? Keep closing out your day in that way. What I want you to do is this emotional debrief. And this is the part that nobody's doing. I want you to ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? You get bonus points for writing it down. Grabbing a piece of paper, have your little after-work transition journal in your desk drawer, but ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? And just do a brain dump of how you're feeling from the day. Not what happened during the day. I don't want you to like write down and rehash everything that went on during the day, or not what's on your to-do list, but literally like, how are you feeling in your body, in your chest, in your shoulders? How are you feeling? Who pissed you off today? Where are you feeling anxious? Why are you feeling overwhelmed? Write it all down. Do a brain dump of a debrief of emotional debrief of your day. And I love to write down one thought, one sentence per line, so you can literally scan the page when you're done and just see all of your thoughts right there. Sometimes you don't even need to do full sentences. You can just write down one word: pissed. Pissed off. Okay. That's two. Or overwhelmed or anxious or worried, right? Write those emotions down and just like get curious about them. But the whole point in doing this 15-minute exercise at the end of your day, the end of the work transition time, you are leaving your work at work. You are identifying your emotions. I say you're naming it and claiming it. Because as soon as you can name an emotion, a negative emotion, it like literally takes the wind out of it. It just automatically takes it down a notch because you're like, oh yeah, I am feeling a little worried about this meeting I have on Friday. And you can just talk yourself through it. You're naming your emotions and you are deciding intentionally that you are leaving them in this notebook and you are not carrying them home. Sounds simple, but it is extremely powerful. And then the next thing, the step, the third step is transitioning into your next shift. So you're not going from your workday to like hanging out on the couch and doing nothing. You're going from your work identity to your home identity. And that transition is the bridge. And when you do not build that bridge intentionally, food becomes the bridge by default. Now, here's the thing. Identifying your emotions is a skill. It sounds simple. It is not always easy. Y'all, I had the hardest time identifying my emotions, and it took practice. When I first came to this work of like, how does this feel in my body? What am I feeling right now? How is this showing up? Is it in my chest? Like, I was like, what the hell? What is this? Like, I'm either mad, I'm sad, I'm glad, I'm angry. That's about it. That's all I knew. But there's so many different emotions that we carry, and when we don't identify what's happening, they create unwanted results. So this is the exact work that I help you with inside Forever Well private weight loss and life coaching. With weekly life coaching, y'all, we work on understanding what your emotions feel like, where are they coming up, who is triggering you, what is happening, how they're showing up in different areas of your life. And most importantly, we talk about What are you going to do instead of reaching for food and alcohol when they get loud? Right? This is, this is the work. This is the 80%, not just knowing what to eat. That's the 10%. But part of the 80% is knowing what you're actually feeling and how to handle it in the moment. Now, let me talk to those of you who are on a GLP-1. Here is something that happens on the medication. Your physical appetite decreases. Significantly. So if you are still reaching for those snacks for the evening and like you hear the call from the pantry, like your favorite snacks are still urging you like, hey, we're in here, come eat us, you can't blame hunger anymore because the medication has already handled that. It's not physical hunger. What you are left with, my friend, is the truth. It is 100% emotional hunger. I want to tell you about a client of mine. She is a full-time attorney. She is the mom to a toddler. She is a business owner on the side, and she's a wife. And she came to me as a private coaching client trying to lose the baby weight. Now, she did the work, right? We worked together for 6, 6 months, maybe a year, and she became emotionally literate. She learned her triggers. She got very self-aware about her perfectionist tendencies. And her sneaky self-sabotaging patterns. And she got very self-aware about what was driving her to stress snack. And she lost about 30 pounds in the work that we did together. Then she decided to continue her weight loss journey with some support, and she got a GLP-1. And over the next 2 years, she lost a total of 65 pounds. I recently had a conversation with her, and this is what she told me. She said when, when she was stressed, food just stopped doing anything for her. When she was on the medication, there was like no dopamine hit when she went to eat her snacks. There was no relief. It was no satisfaction. Like the joy, the relief that she used to get from stress snacking was no longer there because her appetite had been decreased because she was on a GLP-1. And because she had already done the identity work with me, she recognized what was happening. So she was like, all right, we need a new stress outlet. So you know what she started to do? She started walking. She started walking. And every time her mood dipped, every time she finished a hard day at work, she would go walk. And now, 2 years later, that is just who she is. Movement is her stress response. Here's the thing, my friend, the GLP-1 removes the physical excuse, right? Which means the emotional work can no longer be avoided. If you're on a GLP-1 and you still are dealing with the urge to stress snack, or you actually are still stress snacking, the after-work transition time is not optional for you. That is something that you have to do. It is the work. You may be wondering, how do I actually work with Jennifer? How do I do this work? Here's a short answer. Your body changed after 40, and I will help you lose the weight and get your energy, your confidence, and your waistline back. You have two ways that you can work with me. You can work with me inside Forever Well private weight loss and life coaching. That is my one-to-one coaching container where you can lose up to 10 pounds in your first 6 weeks and keep going until you reach your goal with a plan that is built specifically for your life and your body after 40, not a template that is built for everyone else. There's also Learn and Lose, which is my group program where you can lose up to 25 pounds in 6 months by learning the proven system to lose weight after 40 so you never have to start over again. Book a consultation with me and we will figure out together which option is the best fit for you. You can go to jenniferdent.com/consult to book your call. And if you're not ready for that and you're like, oh I want to just keep listening to the podcast and glean what I can from the podcast. All good. I want you to get my Friday newsletter called Stop Dieting Forever Friday, which is a complement to the week's podcast. You can sign up for that right now at jenniferdent.com/emailclub. It's 100% free. And every week I'm going to give you a tool that you can use right now that you— that I talked about on this week's podcast episode. So I want to tell you about another one of my clients who is a corporate professional, mom of two teenagers, doing all the things. And every night she was pantry grazing in secret, the late night snacks. One of her daughters is a Girl Scout, so this is Girl Scout cookie season. She was sneaking downstairs to get those Girl Scout cookies so her own daughters wouldn't catch her doing it. She was making sure that they were in the bed. She knew it was happening. She knew, she knew she needed to stop it, but she could not stop it. It was just an ingrained habit. So while we were working together, she challenged herself to stop eating by 5:00 PM. First week, she honored it every single day. She is what she told me in her own words. She said, I wasn't even hungry. I was using food to deal with stress and life. Now, before she started this little challenge of hers, her scale had been stuck for 4 to 5 weeks. She had plateaued with her weight loss. The first week of making that one change, she's like, oh, started trending down again. And it wasn't because she ate less overall during the day, during the day, but it's because she stopped using food as her emotional off-ramp at the end of the day. That is what the after-work transition time can do for you. It gives your brain a real off-ramp that is not food. So I listen, I already know what you're thinking. Jennifer, I don't have the time. I leave work, I gotta go, I gotta shut down my computer and I gotta go pick up the kids. I gotta go do this. I have to run. I cannot sit there and journal about my feelings for 15 minutes. Here's the thing. I am not asking you to write a novel. I'm asking you for 15 minutes of your day. Before you leave, blocked out on your calendar from 4:45 to 5 PM, 4:45 to 6 PM, whenever works for your day. Because here's the real question: if you cannot give yourself 15 minutes, what are you doing? What are you doing with your life? What is 15 minutes of emotional clarity if it stops you from spending the next 2 hours eating your way through the evening, 5 days a week. Think about it. 15 minutes of emotional clarity. What is that worth to you if it's going to stop this habit of you stress snacking after work every single day? And I want to say this to you directly. If you are struggling to protect 15 minutes on your calendar for yourself, 5 days a week. That is not a scheduling problem, my friend. That is an identity problem, and we need to do some work. This is exactly one of the things we get into inside Forever Well private coaching. We understand why you are having such a hard time prioritizing yourself, because until we solve that, no strategy is going to stick, my friend. Listen, this is your 2.0 self we are building. Your 2.0 self gives herself 15 minutes at the end of the day because she knows how helpful it is. So this is your homework for the week. I want you to go to your calendar right now, pick up your phone, go to your calendar, and block out 15 minutes at the end of your workday. If your brain is like mine and you need a little bit of extra time to get started, give yourself 20 minutes. I call it the ADHD tax. Give myself a little extra time, a little buffer time. Give yourself 20 minutes, okay? Wherever you are, whether it's in the office before you shut down your computer, whether it's in the car before you turn on the ignition and put the car in drive, whether it's at the kitchen table, whether you work from home and you go down to the kitchen, 15 minutes, decide that you are going to do this. You're going to close out your day and you're going to ask yourself how you're feeling. Write it down. Leave those emotions there before you step into your evening. And I want you to do that for 14 days, 2 weeks, and notice what shifts. Now, if you want support making this your default behavior and your— because that's what your 2.0 identity does and not just an effort for a 14-day challenge, I want you to go to jenniferdent.com/consult and book a consultation with me today. We will figure out together which program fits your life right now. And get you across the finish line. And go grab the Friday newsletter, the Stop Dieting Forever Friday newsletter, at jenniferdett.com/emailclub. I know I just gave you a whole lot to do. I just gave you homework, I just said book a call with me, and I also said sign up for my email list. Now here's something that will save you some time. When you do book a consultation with me, you will be automatically added into my email club if you opt in. Okay, so you will automatically get Stop Dieting Forever Friday if you book a weight loss consultation call with me. All right, y'all, live luxe, give yourself 15 minutes, and I will see you in the next episode. Did you love today's episode? Are you loving this podcast? Then you're going to love Forever Well, which which is my exclusive newsletter where I break down how to stop self-sabotaging your weight loss and reinvent yourself into the healthy, grown-ass, confident woman you know you want to be. Girl, each week I'm going to send you bold insights, real talk— because, you know, I like to keep it real— and strategies that you can actually use to start your diet-free lifestyle straight to your inbox. Subscribe now at jenniferdent.com/emailclub or find the link in the show notes and start your reinvention today. Oh, and if you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review because it helps more women just like you find this life-changing work. All right, y'all, head on over to jenniferdent.com/emailclub to Get forever well. All right, live luxe, and I'll see you in the next episode.