Personal Training With Lisa

Cortisol is all the talk right now. Here’s what I’m seeing on social media:

“Cortisol is causing belly fat. A lot of exercise raises cortisol. You need to lower your cortisol.”

These statements are misleading and very broad. Let’s break down what cortisol does and how it effects fat loss in women over 40 (generally in perimenopause).

Cortisol is your body’s stress hormone. It works with the brain to help with mood, fear and motivation. It helps to regulate your metabolism, sleep cycle, keeps inflammation down, regulates blood pressure.

When your body feels like it’s under stress it will increase the cortisol level in your body which in turn raises your heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. When the body senses the stress is gone the heart rate, breathing and blood pressure then return to normal. BUT this is where the issue comes in for some people.

If you are chronically stressed your body is always in that heighted state switch means your body is increasing the cortisol in your body without any breaks. When this happens it can lead to:

weight gain, heart disease, head aches, trouble sleeping, depression, anxiety, memory issues, and digestion problems.

We want to learn how to manage cortisol NOT lower cortisol. We need cortisol to be high at certain points in the day. For example: when we wake up our cortisol level should be high because it’s the body’s response telling us to wake up. When you exercise your cortisol level will increase again, then your body’s cortisol level should slowly decrease throughout the day so that you are tired at night and go to bed.

The problem is what we do during the day/night. We aren’t letting our body manage our cortisol levels naturally. We are waking up to a blarming alarm, looking at social media (getting upset that the influencer you follow is on another vacation and you are headed to a job you hate), turn on the news and our heart rate increases even more. So before you even go to work your heart rate is high, your blood pressure is high and your breathing is rapid (you are causing yourself stress!) Then you head to work where you act like everything is a fire that needs to be put out (so all day you are stressed out). You come home and are too tired to cook so you eat take out (processed foods but stress on the body), then you sit in front of the TV and scroll social media before going to bed and you wonder why you can’t sleep……it’s no surprise! But here is a fix.

Eating healthy foods helps your body to manage cortisol.

Exercise helps your body to manage cortisol, stress and exercise boosts your endorphins (happy hormone)

Learning de-stressing techniques you can use throughout the day will help regulate your breathing.

Stop watching the news, stop scrolling social media, stop comparing your life to everyone’s highlight reel. Start to enjoy your life, be present with your family.

If you’re ready to have a plan to manage your cortisol so that you can lose that belly fat I have a 5 day Cortisol Reset where you will learn exactly how to do this. And don’t worry it won’t add more stress to your day-it will actually remove stress and help you reduce that belly fat you keep stressing about.

Learn more about the 5 Day Cortisol Reset here

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