Is Cortisol hindering weight loss?

Is Cortisol hindering your muscle-building or fat-loss goals? 

Cortisol plays a role in our body composition and appetite, but for most people, it is not something to be concerned about. 

Cortisol can be a problem if there are medical conditions that cause it to be chronically elevated, such as an infection,  a tumor that causes us to make much more cortisol than we normally need for regulation, or in Cushing’s disease, Addison’s Disease, etc. 

Taking corticosteroids for long periods can also cause chronically elevated cortisol. 

What is cortisol?

Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone that your adrenal glands produce and release. The main role of cortisol is to regulate our stress response and aid in functions such as:

• Manages how your body uses carbohydrates, fats, and proteins
• Keeps inflammation down
• Regulates your blood pressure
• Increases your blood sugar (glucose)
• Controls your sleep/wake cycle
• Boosts energy so you can handle stress and restores balance afterward 

Source: Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, Fourth Edition

This is one of the reasons why when life gets hectic, we tend to lower the intensity of our clients’ workouts or even ask them to take a break or deload. 

Daily cortisol fluctuations are not detrimental to either goal, on the contrary, cortisol raises to help us regulate stress. But when influencers find a morsel of knowledge and decide to take it out of context, we end up fearmongering a large portion of the population without any foundational reason other than that it sounded possible.

Cortisol levels tend to be higher in the morning, which helps us awaken; it also tends to dive a little around 2 pm (nap time?) and then lower in the evening, which helps us get ready for sleep. Levels start slowly rising again around 2 am and are highest by the time we wake up.

Cortisol should be fluctuating as needed, but when you face too many stressors too close together for too long, cortisol production stays on when it should be off. 

Stress is very taxing, whether it is coming from exercise, work, family, lack of sleep, dieting, fasting, etc. Without enough recovery, training instead of building you can break you down, and you’ll end with a recovery debt that can lead to injuries, constant pain, chronic fatigue, etc. Try to balance exercise with the rest of your life’s happenings while you can enjoy what you are doing. There are days where stress might come from non-exercise sources, and exercise can help lower stress, but we still need recovery.

If you are training intensely multiple times per week and have a full-time job and a family, stressors are acting upon you in all directions. Without proper planning, training will no longer serve as a catalyst to meet your physical goals.

Contrary to popular thinking, the more your training evolves, the more stress you impose on yourself. An intermediate trainee may be able to do 3 days a week of interval training, whereas a more advanced one may be able to do only 1 or 2 days a week or none at all.

Adaptations to your training are a consolidation of imposed stressors, which determine your muscle gains, fat loss, and strength level.

Learn to spot the signs of poor recovery because some days, it’s not only OK but also beneficial to take a break and just breathe, but you are going to have to evaluate that according to how you are feeling and your own life happenings.

An overwhelming stress load can lead to cortisol overproduction. 

A perfectionist or all-or-nothing mentality is counterproductive. This is why most flexible thinkers tend to outperform those with very strict mindsets. 

Contrary to popular thinking, cortisol is anti-inflammatory, just like the corticosteroids prescribed by a doctor for various conditions. The problem can arise when stress is prolonged for a long period of time without decreasing or fluctuating at the normal times. Because chronically elevated cortisol levels may cause widespread inflammation in the body.

There is a sweet spot, and that’s what we want to aim for:

Cortisol is a hormone that can help us regulate stress. 

When you exercise or do strenuous physical activity, your body is under stress, we are imposing stress on our body. This is when cortisol raises to help us regulate the inflammatory process. 

So, when you hear that high cortisol is a bad thing because cortisol causes inflammation, it is because they don’t understand that cortisol goes up to help regulate inflammation, not the other way around. 

As you can see in the graph, cortisol raises, makes us more alert, increases energy availability, helps to break amino acids to aid in protein synthesis, and regulates inflammation. So, it raises temporarily to help in the process. And as the body recovers, the level starts to go back to normal. 

There can be some cases where cortisol remains high, usually under not normal conditions such as injuries, or overtraining, or other conditions that causes inflammation to be present in the body not temporarily. This needs medical evaluation. If you have heard of cortisol face (moon face), that requires medical evaluation; it does not happen during training or stressful situations alone. 

Does cortisol make you gain weight or prevent losing body fat?

The simple answer is no; the release of cortisol doesn’t directly cause weight gain. But stress can cause levels of ghrelin (the hunger hormone) to rise and levels of leptin (the satiety hormone) to drop, increasing cravings. This can indirectly cause you to eat more or more caloric dense foods that may lead to weight gain. Hence, utilizing cortisol to our advantage instead of allowing it to be higher than needed is crucial for better results when training with a goal in mind. 

Keep in mind that cortisol isn’t only elevated chronically in overweight individuals but also severely underweight ones, such as in anorexia nervosa. Other practices that cause elevated cortisol are prolonged fasting, drinking alcohol, lack of sleep, and recovery. Either situation puts the body under stress. Balance is key. 

Menopause:

There is some new insight that during some menopause stages, it is a good idea to monitor exercise intensity and how it affects recovery. For some people, it seems to work better to slow down, take a break, and walk until they recover, managing stress first. For these women, getting a couple of days a week of a good lifting program and focusing on steps and relaxation techniques may be more beneficial for overall health, enjoyment of life, and sustainability.

A few resources:

According to this study, “Exercise intensity dampens the HPA-axis stress response in a dose-dependent manner, with evidence that the cortisol released from exercising intensely suppresses the subsequent cortisol response to a psychosocial stressor”. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453021002109

If you prefer to listen, check this podcast from the Nadolsky doctors: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cortisol-101/id1611961208?i=1000673165052