Episode 111: My Top 5 Ways to Lower Cortisol in Menopause

We know we need to reduce cortisol to lose weight in menopause. Let's talk about my top 5 actionable tips for HOW.

Download my free Cortisol Checklist here: https://www.mindstrongfitness.com/cortisol-checklist

Reserve your spot in my free 3 day Runway to Summer Metabolism Boosting Challenge here: https://www.mindstrongfitness.com/challenge

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Season X Episode 111

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
menopause, cortisol, weight loss, intermittent fasting, nighttime routine, sleep, meditation, nutrition,
complex carbs, blood sugar, stress management, metabolism, inflammation, gut health,
mind strong fitness

SPEAKERS
Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. Earlier this season, we talked about the
role that cortisol plays in weight loss in general, especially in this menopausal stage of life. So
what do we do about it? In this episode today, we're going to talk about my five favorite tips for
reducing cortisol. Check it out. You
Speaker 1 00:29
Rachel, welcome to the becoming mind strong podcast, the official podcast of mind strong
fitness. My name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of mind strong and we are here for two things. We're here for hope in a stage of life where it feels like we are doing everything right and
nothing is working. I am here to tell you you are not broken. This is fixable, and I promise there
is hope. And number two, we are here for truth in an industry that is designed to keep us
confused with shake systems and point systems and frozen meals. I promise you it doesn't
have to be that difficult. Someone can teach you the skill of riding a bike, someone can teach
you the skill of knitting, and I can teach you to master the skill of nutrition. So are you ready?
Let's rock and roll. You it.
Speaker 1 01:26
So as we talked about in an earlier episode, one of the big themes of menopause is that our
estrogen naturally drops. It is biological. Don't shoot the messenger. This is how we are
designed. And one of estrogens main roles in the body is controlling cortisol. So what happens
again? This is biological. We cannot stop the process of nature is as our estrogen drops, our
cortisol naturally spikes, which means, in a menopausal body, we are naturally walking around
with higher levels of cortisol. We kind of term it as our cortisol resilience goes down right? We
can't handle as much cortisol back in the day. We could over exercise, we could under eat, we
S
S
S
could overwork ourselves. We could put everyone first before us. We can't get away with the
same stuff because we are walking around with higher levels of cortisol naturally, and that
leads to a host of health problems, specifically making weight loss nearly impossible. So let's
talk about my five actionable tips to start reducing cortisol, first and foremost. And this one
pisses some people off, but it is. It is don't shoot the messenger. This is not Rachel's laws of
health and fitness. This is biology. Intermittent fasting is one of the worst things you can do for
your body in menopause. Again, it put it under the category of Yeah. But in my 20s, 30s, early
40s, we are not living in the same body, going long periods of food, of time without food,
whether that's skipping meals consistently, whether it's skipping breakfast, is not ideal. Eating
breakfast is fantastic for you. I'm going to be completely transparent. You hear me talk about
this a lot. I don't eat breakfast every day. I know that it would be great for me. It'd be great for
my health. Some days I forget, and I dive into work, and I look up and I'm like, holy cow, how is
it? Mid afternoon, I should probably put some food in my belly. Eating breakfast is important.
Bigger Picture. We don't want to be going long periods of time without food, and we certainly
do not want to go long periods of time intermittent fasting. It is causing your blood sugar to go
all over the place, and it is raising those cortisol levels higher and higher and higher. Now I will
tell you, we have some women we work with. We have plenty of women that we work with and
ignite our signature 12 week program, and they come to us and they're like, Rachel, I have
eaten this way for 20 years. I don't know how to eat any other way. My answer then is, okay,
like, let's at least get your macros in check so we can make sure you're getting the right
amount of calories, the proper balance of carbs, fat, protein, and then you eat the way that
works for you. This is about a sustainable lifestyle. And if the question at hand is, how can I
reduce my cortisol and menopause? The answer is, intermittent fasting is one of the worst
things we can be doing for our bodies and specifically for our cortisol levels. Thing number two
to lower cortisol in menopause is paying attention to our nighttime routine. Now, if you've hung
out here before, you know that I am not a fan of rainbows and glitter and unicorns and beating
our chests and saying mantras, right? I believe that all of this has to come down to what
actually works for your lifestyle, and I say that because it's a beautiful thing to say. Let's go to
bed early. Let's focus on seven to nine hours of sleep. Let's meditate every night before bed,
right? Let's turn off all screens. And the reality for a lot of us is we go, go, go all day. So by the
time the house is quiet and work is done and we shut down our computer, what we actually
want to do is sit on the couch and have a glass of wine and numb our brain, because we just
worked our booties off. And we want some US time, right? And there is no. Nothing wrong with
that, and we can also accept the fact that it is very, very difficult, nearly impossible, to lose
weight in menopause, if your cortisol levels are sky high and you're not sleeping enough. So
when I talk about a bedtime routine, I am not saying to flick a switch and do a major life
overhaul and suddenly you are this beacon of health who puts their feet in the grass and sings
kumbaya every day. What I'm going to suggest here is just that there's some suggestions
where what I'm going to recommend you do is take a look at what's the low hanging fruit,
right? Of these options is there one that I can add in or take away? Because we are human. We
are pleasure seeking creatures as humans, right? We are designed to avoid pain and seek
pleasure. So when we start doing one or two of these things, and we say, You know what, that
was actually lovely, what else can I do? And then the Snowball is rolling down a hill. So screens
are a big one. It is true that that blue light is going to mess up your brain's ability to shut down
and get to sleep. Look, sit on your couch, scroll through Instagram, watch a TV show, just try to
give yourself some time before bed. Replace it with something else so that your brain can start
to calm down and you can sleep a little bit better. Same thing with work, and I'm guilty of this
one, I have learned it's not just one email. It's not just oh, let me log on and do this one thing,
because once your brain gets going, next thing we know, we look up and two hours have gone
by. What we don't want is to be stimulating our brain right before bed, because we know how
that goes. Then we're laying in bed and we're remembering that thing we said at 10am Why
did I say that? Why did I do that? Now we're down the rabbit hole. The name of the game is
relaxing our brain, which means turning off screens, which means hopefully staying away from
work as much as possible. Third thing under bedtime routine is avoiding alcohol. Now look, I'm
not saying don't ever have alcohol right again at the end of the day, some of us love a glass of
whiskey. Some of us love a glass of wine. What I'm suggesting is, if you are going to choose to
have one of those things, put a break between when you have it and bedtime. So if I was going
to put this in a very non non nutritious way, go for happy hour, not a nightcap. Is how I'm going
to say that. You can quote me on that. Rachel said, Go to happy hour, not a nightcap. If you are
choosing to drink, the more space you can put between when you have alcohol and when you
go to sleep, the better off you're going to be. So if you're going to have alcohol, do it earlier in
the night, as opposed to a drink right before bed. Last thing under the category of bedtime
routine is anything that's going to wind your brain down. So if you are someone who's
meditating or wants to get into meditation. We're going to, spoiler alert, we're about to talk
about that more. That's a great thing to do before bed. So, I mean, I'm not talking about joining
a silent retreat and for a month, right? Taking 30 Seconds to take some deep breaths. A habit
that I developed last year, that I've been loving, is I got back to reading. I had really gotten
away from physically reading books. I listen to a lot of audio books, but now, at the end of the
day, you know, we'll watch a show or something like that, to kind of unwind, sit on the couch
with the puppies, but then before bed, there's a solid 3045, minutes that's reserved for reading.
And what I find is, even if I am loving the book, I don't make it very far, because then I start
dropping the book on my face falling asleep, right because it's winding my brain and my body
down real quickly. We've been talking a lot about cortisol in today's episode. So I want to give
you a free guide that you can use to go along with this episode. If you go to www, dot Mind,
Strong fitness.com/cortisol-checklist. Again, it's cortisol hyphen checklist, or just use the link in
the show notes below. It'll give you a free copy to my cortisol checklist, where we go through,
what are some cortisol reducing activities that I can add in, what are some cortisol raising
activities then I could take out. Let's get back to the show
Speaker 1 09:00
so if we can still get your screen time, and if it helps you relax, right? I'm not saying to cut it out
altogether, but if we can end it even an hour, half hour early, fill in the gap, right? A great tool
for rewiring our brain is don't just cut out a habit, introduce a new one. So fill in that gap with
something slow, something easy, reading, breathing, meditating, all of these things are going
to make sleep come easier. All right, so we're talking about the five things that help reduce
cortisol. We talked about not skipping meals, not intermittent fasting, and all of these we just
spoke about go under the category of evening routine. Thing number three on our list of five.
No surprise, if you've hung out here before, fueling your body correctly. Now I'll tell you behind
the scenes. I put this as number three because I think it's the most obvious one. If I started with
number one, I think most people would be like Rachel, we know you talk about it all the time,
and in the list of priorities, it's number one. No sugar coating. It is number one. The single most
important thing you can do to reduce cortisol in a menopausal body, in anyone's body, really is
fueling your body correctly. If you are under eating you've probably heard me use this analogy
1000 times. It's so cheesy, and it's so true. If I go out I buy a big, fancy sports car, right? I want
to be like those guys in my gym who think it's super cool to like, rev the engine of their sports
car and scare the baju gees out of all of us. I don't know why guys like to do that, but anyway, I
digress. So I get my big, fancy sports car, I slam on the gas, but the tanks on E Am I putting
more or less stress on that car trying to floor the gas pedal with no gas in the car. If we are
trying to get our body to do anything, forget about workouts, getting through the day, doing
S
some work, getting up to go to the bathroom, walking the dog, and we are under fueling it. Do
you think we're putting more or less stress in our body? Do you think we're raising or lowering
our cortisol levels? Getting your nutrition in check is number one when it comes to reducing
cortisol. That means right number of calories, right balance of carbs, fat and protein. Number
four on our tips to reduce cortisol and menopause, and I want to really dive into this one for a
second, is meditation. Here's the thing with meditation, 90% of the time, it used to be like 98
it's gotten better over the years, but 90% of the time, when I talk to people about meditating,
what I hear is Rachel, I can't meditate. The second I sit still, my brain wanders. And the answer
is yes, that is how humans are designed. It's called a lot of times you'll hear called monkey
brain. The way that our brains are designed, and it's a safety mechanism, is they're always
jumping all over the place. We don't even notice, but our brain, naturally, by design, does not
sit still. It is not a realistic expectation. I talk a lot about life is all about expectation
management. It is not a realistic expectation that I am going to sit down to meditate and my
brain is going to be calm for the next 10 minutes. No one in the history of ever has done that.
I'm going to venture to guess that the Buddha himself does not have that experience. The point
of meditation is to find these little glimpses where we can find peace by coming back to our
breath. That's it. If you're going to sit down to meditate very, very non new technical, you sit
down. You could do it laying down. I prefer sitting down. Close your eyes if it feels safe. If not,
you can just put your gaze at the floor. I like to put my palms up. You can put them down. It's a
little more grounding. And you just sit and you focus on your breath. Don't do this if you're
driving. Obviously, you focus on your breath. And what's going to happen very quickly is you're
going to notice that suddenly you've gone down the rabbit hole and you're thinking about what
to make for dinner, and that means you have to go to the supermarket, and when are you
going to fit that in? Because you have to fit the Grands kids up from soccer, and down the
rabbit hole we've gone. How much time has passed by? I don't know. I've probably been
thinking about this dinner thing for the past seven minutes. We're not going to shame, blame,
guilt, go up. There goes my monkey brain right back to my breath. It's in those tiny, tiny
moments that we come back to our breath. That's where the magic happens. The more you do
it, the better at it you get. It's why it's called the practice of meditation. And I have been
meditating for years. I don't do it an hour a day. I do it 10 minutes a day. I set a goal at 10
minutes a day years ago with the intention that one day that would increase. I've never
increased it, because 10 minutes feels sustainable to me. Maybe one day I will. Right now, 10
minutes feels good for me, and I'll tell you what, in 10 minutes, I have never made it anywhere
close to 10 minutes. I haven't made it close to a full minute where I can go without my brain
wandering. That is not the point. The more you practice, the better it feels. I always think of it,
it feels like a warm bath for my soul, for my whole body. When I can get myself to sit still and
focus on my breath, your body, your brain, will more than Thank you. Some days, some days, my brain is going crazy and I'm like, Oh, we just did a live workshop last night. I have to get to
my email, and it is really tough to meditate. And I still show up and do it. It's like a workout.
Some days it feels great. Some days it just feels like, let's get through this thing. On the other
side of it, you will always thank yourself. I do not suggest starting with an hour a day. I don't
even suggest starting with 10 minutes a day. When back in the day, when I was one to one
coaching, and I would introduce this to members, we would start with two minutes a day. Try it
for two minutes. Get the snowball rolling down a hill, number five. And how to reduce cortisol. Menopause, we have not skipping meals or intermittent fasting. We have, what low hanging
fruit, what baby steps and momentum can I get around my evening routine? Fueling your body?
I put it as number three, but it is number one, right number of calories, right, balance of carbs,
fat, protein. Number four, introducing some sort of meditation practice into your day if you
don't have one already, number five is the most logistical. I'm going to teach you one of my
favorite little tricks. If you've been on live workshops with me or anything like that, you already
know this trick. So here's a refresher. This trick does not work for everyone. I have had people
come back and say, this gave me my life back. Thank you. And I've had some people come
back and say, Yeah, I tried it didn't do much for me. It's worth a shot. About an hour and a half,
well, let me back up and tell you the why behind this one to three. The one to 3am wake up in
menopause is huge. For a ton of menopausal women, we wake up somewhere between one to
3am our minds racing, our hearts racing. It's hard to get back to bed. The reason that happens,
as a refresher, if you haven't heard this before, is that in a non menopausal body, our cortisol
kick starts, what's called our circadian rhythm, our circadian rhythm. So we go to bed, and as
we're sleeping, our cortisol is slowly, slowly, slowly spiking until it's time to wake up. That's how
we naturally wake up in menopause, our cortisol spikes too fast and too early, typically
between one to 3am so the name of the game becomes, how do I slow down my cortisol
release in my sleep so it stops waking me up in the middle of the night, right? And then it's
cortisol waking us up. So our minds racing, our minds racing, our heart's racing, it's hard to go
back to bed. Here's my logistical trick. About an hour and a half before bed, we're going to
have a snack, and I'll give you some examples, but first I'll tell you the guidelines. This snack is
going to be mostly complex carb based, with a little bit of fat and protein. So in earlier podcast
episodes, I get deep into macros. When it comes to carbs, there's two types of carbs. There's
complex carbs, which tend to be our more nutritious fiber, rich carbs, right? Things like whole
grains and brown rice and quinoa, and they're simple carbs. The theme is sugar, like my Krispy
Kreme donuts that I love. So for this snack, you are going to have a complex carb based snack
with a little bit of fat and protein. One of my favorite ones is a slice of whole grain toast with a
little bit of almond butter. Some people do a rice cake with maybe some peanut butter. I know
some people who like meat sticks. I'm not a meat stick kind of girl, but some people like meat
sticks, so they'll do like some popcorn and a meat stick. The purpose of this is complex carbs
tend to be slower burning. I have a podcast episode about what to eat before you work out. We
talk a lot about complex carbs because they're slower burning, and they're going to help
regulate blood sugar, and the fat and protein that you're adding in is going to help that release
even more, with the intention that it's going to keep blood sugar and cortisol stabilized and
help you sleep through the night. It's not foolproof. Again, I've heard people be like, yes, thank
you. I finally slept through the night for the first time. And I don't know how long I've had some
people be like, I tried. It didn't really do anything for me. It's worth a shot. I've heard more pros
than there's not cons. It just doesn't work for some people. But I've heard from enough people
that it gave them their sleep back that that's worth it, and I always recommend to people. So
those are my five top tips. There are hundreds of them. One of the first things we do with all of
our members is we do a menopause symptom checklist where we go through, there's, there
are hundreds of menopause symptoms. It's not just night flash, hot flashes and night sweats.
And we take those, those symptoms, and we categorize them into what I call the big three. The
Big Three of menopause is gut health, inflammation and cortisol, because that shows us what,
what can we tackle? Right? It's like knocking over a domino or striking one match that lights
the other matches. Let's tackle the big three, and all these other symptoms are going to fall
into place. So under that category of cortisol, we go through a cortisol checklist, and we start to
look at okay, in a daily basis. We're looking for on a daily basis, we're looking for low hanging
fruit. First, here are some cortisol raising activities that we can take away, and here's some
things we can introduce that we can add to our day to lower cortisol. You know me well enough
by now to know it is never zero to 100 It is never a major life overhaul. So what we do with our
members is we go through these lists and say, what's the low hanging fruit for you, for your
lifestyle? What are one or two things that we can take out? What are one or two things that we
can add in, because we know as pleasure seeking creatures, as we do those things, we say, Man, I feel like a different person. I feel so much more relaxed, so much less stress. My weight
loss is becoming easier. What else can I do? And then we can keep going on the list. But for
today, these are my top five. These are some of the the heavy hitters that we can get the ball
rolling, to get cortisol down and make weight loss easier in menopause,
Speaker 1 19:35
I am hosting the largest event we have ever done, in mind strong history, and you don't want
to miss it. From March 3 through fifth, 2026 join me live on Zoom totally free for mind Strong's
runway to summer, my three Day Metabolism boosting challenge to join. And for more details,
go to www dot mind strong fitness.com/challenge
19:59
or. Just use the link in the show notes below. You.
S