5 Habits to Help Lower Stress and Support Your Cortisol Levels
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ What cortisol is and what symptoms led to me wanting to better support my levels
⋒ The 5 steps I took to lower my cortisol
⋒ How I feel like these steps are supporting me (with lots of fun, science-y info, too!)
I feel like you know this but I have to say it anyway so before we dive into this topic: I’m not a doctor and this is not intended to be medical advice. Always seek professional medical assistance over taking my word, lol.
Let’s start with a little back story – in November, I was waking up almost every single night at 2 AM. I’m not joking – it was like clockwork… no pun intended.
I randomly posted about it on my Instagram stories and a few people DMed me saying that often, when people wake up between 2-3 AM consistently, a culprit could be that you’re stressed/your cortisol levels are too high.
My first reaction when people said that was, “Hmm that’s weird because I don’t feel stressed at all.” I think that’s because my mind went to circumstantial life stress. Work was going well, family life was going well, my marriage was going well… so I was confused about why people were telling me I was stressed, lol.
I honestly had no clue what cortisol was so I looked it up. Here’s what I learned from Web MD:
”Think of cortisol as nature’s built-in alarm system. It’s your body’s main stress hormone. It works with certain parts of your brain to control your mood, motivation, and fear.
Your adrenal glands -- triangle-shaped organs at the top of your kidneys -- make cortisol.
Cortisol plays an important role in a number of things your body does. For example, it:
Manages how your body uses carbohydrates, fats, and proteins
Keeps inflammation down
Regulates your pressure
Increases your blood sugar (glucose)
Controls your sleep/wake cycle
Boosts energy so you can handle stress and restores balance afterward”
After reading a bunch about cortisol, I realized that while my life circumstances may not have been causing me stress, I was still putting stress on myself in subtle ways, and had been for over a decade.
Now I’m not a doctor, but I think because I was no longer running on fumes and just trying to survive (thanks to Hustling Sanely), my body was kind of “coming down” from operating under constant stress. It’s like fight or flight… my body had been in fight mode since my early 20s thanks to hustle culture, and in my 30s I started making changes to live a peacefully productive life and my life became more… well peaceful. But I think because my mind and body were finally at a calmer place as their norm, the effects of the residual stress from the last decade were taking a toll on me.
I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else but it makes sense to me, lol.
Anyway, after realizing this, I made the decision to focus on changes I could make and habits I could weave into my life to help regulate my cortisol levels. I wanted to reign in stress that I was unknowingly putting on myself.
Since around mid-December, I’ve been really intentional about supporting my cortisol levels and I can honestly say that I’ve noticed a difference in my overall quality of life. I sleep better, I have more energy (because of the better sleep I’m guessing), and I’m less anxious. Which makes sense, because that Web MD article went on to say:
“But what if you’re under constant stress and the alarm button stays on? It can derail your body’s most important functions. It can also lead to a number of health problems, including:
Anxiety and depression
Headaches
Heart disease
Memory and concentration problems
Problems with digestion
Trouble Sleeping
Weight gain
Anyway, I wanted to dedicate an entire blog post to the habits I did to help lower my stress and support my cortisol – because let’s be honest, when we’re less stressed out, it’s easier for us to live peacefully productive lives, ya know?
5 Things I Have Been Doing to Lower My Stress and Support My Cortisol
01: Limiting my caffeine intake and being intentional about when I consume it.
Let me start off by saying – I LOVE COFFEE. My relationship with coffee is like that of Lorelai Gilmore. I mean hello, my husband and I are partners of a local coffee shop here in Tampa. But forreal, I love the smell of coffee, the taste of coffee, the comfort of coffee, the community that happens while drinking coffee… coffee is an experience to me, a ritual. I LOVE IT.
I started drinking coffee when I was like 18 and y’all I am honestly embarrassed by how much caffeine I used to drink. In my early 20s, I was drinking at least a pot of coffee a day. I’d make a pot in the morning and just drink it throughout the day.
I didn’t realize how much caffeine I was drinking until I decided to Google how much caffeine was in stuff one day when I was like 28 or 29 and I almost fell over from shock. And you wanna know the reason I Googled it in the first place? I was having an issue with my eye twitching uncontrollably. So I Googled that first “like hello why is my eye twitching and why won’t it stop” and something about too much caffeine came up and I was like WAIT WHAT there’s such a thing as too much caffeine???
I’m not trying to be a bubble buster but let me fill you in on how much caffeine is in some stuff:
Alani Nu energy drink: 200 mg
Cup of black drip coffee: 95 mg on average
Latte: 125 mg (for a double shot) on average
Pre-workout: 350 mg on average
Starbucks Coffee, Pike Place Roast, Venti: 410 mg
Starbucks cold foam cold brew, grande: 205 mg
Starbucks nitro cold brew with sweet cream: 325 mg
And do you know that accordingly to the Mayo Clinic, the recommended amount of caffeine for normal adults is not to exceed 400 mg? Let me tell you, it adds up fast! When I found out that I was drinking waaay over 400 mg a day, I started tracking my caffeine and made sure not to go over 400 mg a day. When I got pregnant, I cut back to 200 mg a day and I couldn’t believe how much less anxious I felt so I’ve stuck with that range post-pregnancy, too.
Now, my norm is between 140 mg - 200mg a day.
When I wake up, I used to have a coffee right away, now I have a decaf coffee with collagen so I get in a good amount of protein right away. I also switched from oat milk to whole milk to up the protein in my coffee even more. But not only that, I don’t drink caffeine after 1 PM anymore. Because even “if caffeine doesn’t affect you” it still stays in your system and can disrupt your quality of sleep, even if it doesn’t affect your ability to fall asleep.
02: Prioritizing sleep hygiene.
Okay, what’s sleep hygiene? Sleep hygiene is healthy habits, behaviors, and environmental factors that can be adjusted to help you have a good night's sleep. To be transparent, I haven’t had the best history of sleep hygiene. I remember when I lived with roommates when I was like 19, one of my roommates would find me asleep at my desk sometimes with Friends blasting on my TV – like I would just watch TV/work/study until I literally passed out.
And then up until a few years ago, I would regularly skip my evening skincare, scroll on my phone and/or watch TV until after 10 PM, do my workouts at like 7 PM, have caffeine until like 4 PM – and I wondered why I couldn’t sleep well/why I felt so tired even after getting a full night of sleep.
I never really thought about sleep quality!
I’ve always been a morning routine girlie but evening routines just kinda kicked my butt because I wasn’t intentional with my time in the evenings. My routine was filled with habits that didn’t support good quality sleep and I didn’t even realize it because I was kind of just in autopilot mode from being so tired at the end of the day.
Thankfully, after implementing The Hustle Sanely Planning System™ I no longer feel completely exhausted at the end of each day. I’ve been working on my sleep hygiene for the last few years and then when I started waking up at like 2 AM every night back in November, I made “create an evening routine that supports good sleep hygiene” my focus goal for December.
I got really serious about getting clear on my vision, defining my priorities, and creating a routine that supports my season for the evenings.
Here’s what I’ve done to help prioritize my sleep quality:
+ This one is over the top but we bought a new mattress. Adam and I have always had hand-me-down mattresses from our families and then 7 years ago we bought our own mattress for the first time but it wasn’t the highest quality…it was what we could afford back then, though. So during Black Friday last year, I was scoping out mattress deals and we decided to invest in a Tempur-Pedic Cloud mattress and pillows and oh my gosh talk about a big difference! I don’t wake up with cricks in my neck/back anymore and it’s glorious, lol
+ Started taking a magnesium supplement to support my sleep. I tried a few different ones and really like this one…I’ve been using it for over 2 months at this point and I definitely notice a difference in my sleep when I take it. When I started taking it, I started having dreams again – I think because it helps me get into a deeper sleep.
+ Go to sleep and wake up around the same time every day. This has helped my body regulate my sleep/wake cycles.
+ Practice phone hours. I put my phone away around 8:45 PM and read until I go to sleep around 10 PM. I try not to look at screens within an hour of going to bed. Not including my Kindle but that doesn’t have blue light so I don’t think it counts, lol.
+ Getting my workouts in earlier in the day. Some studies have shown if you do high-intensity exercise close to bedtime, you could have trouble falling asleep and it also affects your sleep quality. So now I aim to have my workouts done by noon every day. I’m not perfect about this (because our schedules and routines are tools, not chains) but I do make it my standard for most days.
+ Not having caffeine after 1 PM – we already talked about this one!
Since creating an evening routine that implements these habits, I’ve noticed a drastic difference in my sleep quality and my overall well-being which definitely helps lower my stress.
03: Changing up my workout routine.
I mentioned in the last one, that doing my workouts earlier in the day helps to lower my stress and support my cortisol levels. Well, during my deep-dive research about what I could do to support my cortisol levels, I learned that doing too much high-intensity exercise ultimately stresses your body out. When we don’t have enough rest and recovery time, our bodies interpret HIIT workouts as stress…that’s wild and I had no idea. My norm for the last decade or so has been 5 HIIT workouts a week…yikes.
An article from Healthline says, “Without proper recovery, intense exercise can lead to elevated levels of cortisol in the bloodstream and heightened symptoms of physical stress, even when exercise is not being performed.”
So me doing HIIT so much for such a long period, was putting an excess of stress on my body and I didn’t even realize it. Imagine that…10 years of built-up, underlying stress on my body. No wonder my sleep quality was so poor!
Since learning this, I’ve altered my weekly workout routine and it’s been really rad because I’ve noticed that since making the changes, I feel stronger and perform better in my workouts because I’m giving my body time to recover between HIIT sessions.
Here’s my current workout split:
Mondays: walk + lower body-focused weight lifting session
Tuesdays: HIIT in the form of sprints + shoulder + tricep-focused weight lifting session
Wednesdays: walk + core
Thursdays: HIIT circuit + back + bicep-focused weight lifting session
Fridays: walk + glute + hamstring-focused weight lifting session
Saturdays: walk + core
Sundays: walk
04: Doing daily grounding with breathwork.
This is one of my favorite habit stacks right now – doing breathwork while I’m doing my daily grounding. Basically it’s me being outside with my bare feet in the grass taking really deep intentional breaths, lol. Sounds crunchy but there’s actual science behind both things so hear me out.
Let’s talk about grounding first. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about it on the show before but grounding, sometimes called earthing refers to direct skin contact with the surface of the Earth, such as with bare feet or hands. Subjective reports that walking barefoot on the Earth enhances health and provides feelings of well-being can be found in the literature and practices of diverse cultures from around the world. (Source)
Grounding and its health benefits have existed for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine, Aboriginal cultures, and Indigenous communities. In the 1800s, well-known German scientists began proposing walking barefoot for health benefits.
Beyond legend and anecdotal evidence, a growing body of research supports and explores the physiological effects and possible health benefits of grounding.
Some health benefits of grounding that have been studied include:
Improved mood
Improved blood flow
Improved immune system function
Reduced post-exertion muscle soreness
Reduced pain
Improved sleep quality (deeper and more restorative sleep)
Boosted metabolic rate
Reduced inflammation
Reduced autoimmune signaling
Disease prevention (particularly inflammatory and autoimmune conditions)
Reduced stress
Improved wound healing
Improved physical function and energy
Decreased fatigue and tiredness
(Source)
Now let’s chat about breathwork. Raise your hand if when you hear the phrase “breathwork” you’re like wtf is that? Because that used to be me, lol. My therapist is actually the one who introduced me to breathwork and she taught me different types of breathwork to help me manage my anxiety.
So what is breathwork? It’s basically intentional breathing. An article from WebMD says, “Your breath brings oxygen into your body so that you can thrive. When you are physically or emotionally stressed, it affects how you breathe. Breathwork helps to calm your stress and bring balance to your body.”
The article goes on to say, “Breathwork is trendy right now, but it’s not new. People have been practicing breathwork for thousands of years, and it has roots in yoga practice. The basic idea of breathwork is to release toxins and stress when you breathe out and nourish your mind and body when you breathe in.
Research on breathwork is promising. Potential health benefits of breathwork include:
Alkalizing your blood PH
Anti-inflammatory effect
Elevating your mood
Breathwork may also have a positive impact on your central nervous system. When you feel stressed, your breath tends to become fast and shallow. This limits the oxygen entering your bloodstream. Your brain tells your body that there is a threat, and your body responds in fight or flight.
That last part, calming the central nervous system, is why my therapist wanted me to start implementing regular breathwork into my regular life.
So what I do is while I’m outside grounding (which is usually with Everly), I do 5-10 rounds of this: big inhale through my nose, hold for a second then inhale a little bit more through my nose then a big exhale out of my mouth.
It’s super easy and I’m able to do it while I’m playing with Evvy in the backyard.
05: Making sure I’m eating enough protein.
This last one is pretty straightforward – making sure I’m consuming enough protein.
“Firk et al. showed that intake of protein increased positive mood and dampened the cortisol response to acute stress.
We hypothesized that high-protein foods, in contrast to comparable high-carbohydrate foods, would not increase salivary cortisol concentrations more under stress and consequently would improve mood.” (Source)
I used to be a personal trainer so I understand the importance that high-quality protein plays in our bodies. To keep it real, I’m quick to grab a more carb-filled snack than a protein-filled one so I’ve been trying to be more aware of that since focusing on trying to lower my stress and support my cortisol.
Now don’t get me wrong – I am still a carb-loving girlie and I’m not one of those people who thinks carbs are bad. Our bodies need carbs, too! I’m just more mindful of eating a better balance of carbs and protein these days.
Here are some things I’ve done to help up my protein intake:
+ Add collagen to my morning coffee
+ Have a Chobani complete yogurt drink after my coffee and before I workout
+ Track my macros 2-3 days a week to keep a pulse on how much protein I’m averaging (instead of just guessing)
+ Drinking a high-quality whey isolate protein on the days when I need more protein (here is my personal favorite)
+ Like I mentioned earlier, I swapped oat milk for whole milk in my coffee
+ Make sure to have around at least 20 grams of protein with every main meal (so breakfast, lunch, and dinner)
Alright y’all that’s it for today – 5 things I’ve been doing to help me lower my stress that I’ve actually noticed a difference because of!
Let’s recap them:
01: Limiting my caffeine intake and being intentional about when I’m having it.
02: Prioritizing sleep hygiene.
03: Changing up my workout routine.
04: Doing daily grounding with breathwork.
05: Making sure I’m eating enough protein.
Don’t get stressed out (lol see what I did there) thinking you have to make all these changes right now. I’ve been making these changes and integrating them into my life over the last few months – not all at once. Pick 1-2 and weave them into your life in a way that works for you. Then once they’ve become your new norm, start to weave in another one.
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