Cortisol is not an inherently bad hormone, but we need to know when it can be bad for fat loss, muscle development, and overall health.
In this article, we are going to address:
- What is Cortisol?
- How Cortisol Causes Weight Gain
- Acute Stress vs Chronic Stress
- Natural Ways to Lower Cortisol for Fat loss
What is Cortisol?
Cortisol is your main stress hormone. It is produced by the adrenal glands and considered to be a natural steroid. You can think of cortisol as your “fight or flight” hormone.
We experience cortisol spikes daily, but there are unique situations where cortisol levels become especially high
These are situations where you are:
- Being chased by a Pitbull
- Having a bad argument with your significant other
- In a car accident and trying to determine who’s at fault
- Being let go from your job
Events like these are when cortisol can be bad. However, there are instances where cortisol spikes can be beneficial for your fitness.
How Cortisol Causes Weight Gain
If we know based on decades of research that weight gain is caused by an overconsumption of calories, what does cortisol have to do with it?
Well, cortisol can have both a psychological and physiological effect on gaining fat.
The Psychological Effect Cortisol Has on Fat Gain
When you have chronically high levels of stress, you activate the part of your brain known as the Reward System. This is when good dietary decision-making becomes impaired. You are more likely to overconsume:
- Junk Food
- Simple Carbohydrates
- Refined Sugars
- Saturated Fats and Trans Fats
There is nothing wrong with a little bit of junk in moderation. Given you are in a caloric deficit, getting enough protein, getting enough fiber, and getting a balance of fats and carbs, you will still lose body fat.
The problem is you don’t care for tracking your calories or macronutrients when you are dealing with too many stressors in your life.
Whether these stressors are from your personal life, professional life, or financial life, you will use pleasurable food as a coping mechanism to deal with these stressors.
If you consume too many calories from pleasurable food, you will store fat. This is the psychological effect of fat gain.
The Physiological Effect Cortisol Has on Fat Gain
So, how would cortisol physiologically impact fat gain? Chronically high cortisol acts as an antagonist to human growth hormone or HGH. This is problematic, because HGH is responsible for everything good that occurs at the cellular level, including:
- Anti-Aging
- Collagen Production
- Fat Metabolism
- Muscle Growth
- Retention of Lean Body Mass
- Testosterone Production in Men
Low levels of growth hormone can cause you to lose muscle. What happens if you lose muscle? You’re metabolic rate declines. What happens if your metabolic rate declines? You end up overeating and storing body fat.
Low leptin levels are another issue associated with high cortisol. Leptin is your satiety hormone. If this hormone gets too low, you will have severe hunger issues in a caloric deficit. If you are not too familiar with leptin, then you need to give this article a read How to Keep Leptin Levels High for Fat Loss.
Acute Stress vs Chronic Stress
Acute Stress
Acute stress is a natural form of stress we experience every day. This type of stress is short-term.The cortisol spike you get comes down once the stressful event is over. Acute stress can be good and bad depending on the situation.
Getting out of bed in the morning is an acutely stressful event. Even if you had a great night’s sleep and got 9 hours of uninterrupted rest, your cortisol would still be high since it’s recruiting energy for you to physically get out of bed.
This is why you stretch after you wake up. Not only are you stretching out the tiredness, but you are trying to bring down the cortisol spike.
Heavy-weight training is another acutely stressful event. Every week you are fighting to break a new personal lifting record. Whether you are trying to get an extra repetition or lift 5 extra pounds, it’s still a stressor on the body.
Getting out of bed and heavy-weight training are 2 examples of how acute stress can be good.
Now, acute stress can be bad when you are faced with a situation that is not routine for you.
For instance, you encounter a loose dog while walking and you’re fearful he might attack you. Once you walk past the dog and realize he means no harm, your cortisol comes down.
Chronic Stress
Chronic stress is not healthy. It is often long-term and can have a negative impact on your fitness. When you are chronically stressed, your ghrelin levels go up. If you don’t know, ghrelin is your main hunger hormone.
It sends a signal to your brain indicating you want something to eat. Ghrelin is another hormone that isn’t inherently bad, but if it gets uncontrollable, you will have trouble managing your caloric intake.
Common chronic stressors like:
- Project Deadlines
- Multiple Jobs
- Grad School
- Love Life Issues
- Depression
can all trigger the release of ghrelin. This is where the concept of “stress eating” comes from. Your appetite goes up and your consumption of junk food goes up as a way of feeling better about chronic stress.
If you want to learn more about controlling ghrelin, check out this article How to Reduce Ghrelin and Manage Hunger.
Natural Ways to Lower Cortisol for Fat loss
High cortisol is fixable once you know what to do. You don’t have to take a cortisol supplement if you don’t want to.
Sure, supplementation can be beneficial, but if you don’t employ the strategies we are about to get into in the next part of this article, then cortisol supplements won’t be helpful for fat loss.
1. Prioritize Quality Sleep
Lack of sleep is one of the most common causes of high cortisol. If you’re not sleeping enough, you will not produce enough HGH to ensure your metabolism is functioning correctly.
We are all aware of the consequences of sleep deprivation.
- Your ability to concentrate at work becomes impaired.
- Training Performance declines
- You get headaches more frequently
- Ambition to get task completed goes down
You should aim to get about 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. This amount of sleep should stabilize your cortisol levels and keep human growth hormone relatively high.
If you want to dig deeper into growth hormone, check out this article High Human Growth Hormone Is Needed for Better Fat Loss.
2. Get Rid of the Cardio
This may come as a shock to you, but cardio is not for fat loss. Cardio is for athletic performance and heart health. This doesn’t mean that cardio is bad, but you’re reasoning for doing it can be bad.
The most important things when it comes to losing fat are:
- Maintaining a net-caloric deficit.
- An effective strength-training program
- Proper Protein intake
When you add cardio to your program on top of already eating in a caloric deficit, you are adding an additional stressor your body doesn’t want.
Being in a caloric deficit is a stressor, but it’s a stressor that’s needed for fat loss.
People who swear cardio is imperative for fat loss typically do it for 1 of 2 reasons.
Reason Number 1, they are trying their absolute best to outwork their atrocious diet. They don’t track their calories and macros. They are eating whatever they want in “reason”.
They are doing all these things in hopes that a 45-minute HIT cardio session every day will give them 6 pack abs. It doesn’t really work like that.
Reason Number 2, they might be doing everything right as far as maintaining a deficit, tracking calories, tracking macros, and strength training. However, they are doing cardio to speed up fat loss.
Unfortunately, no amount of cardio can significantly speed up fat loss.
When calories are low and strength training is accounted for, cardio doesn’t add to your total daily energy expenditure as much as you’d expect.
The body finds a way to conserve about 50-70% of the calories you burn through structured exercise. This is based on recent research.
You can go for a 5-mile run and burn 600 calories, but only 300-420 of those calories count towards your TDEE.
Tracking how many calories you burn through exercise is a useless indicator of an effective workout.
You think you are increasing your metabolism, but you’re just increasing your appetite, which will cause you to overeat and not lose fat.
This is how cortisol levels are negatively impacted by cardio.
Just to reiterate, there is a great place for cardio in sports performance. In context of long-term fat loss, it is terrible.
3. Go For Walks Outside in Nature
Walking has been shown to be the best exercise for reducing cortisol hormone. When you walk, you release chemicals in your brain called endorphins. The brain makes endorphins to improve your mood and alleviate stress.
It’s especially important to go for walks outside in nature. Walking on a treadmill is not as beneficial as walking outdoors. When you walk outdoors, you’re going somewhere and not confined to a small space.
Also, depression and anxiety have been shown to decrease when you walk outdoors.
For fat loss, we should be aiming for 7,000 – 10,000 steps a day.
You are probably reading this thinking “I thought cardio wasn’t needed for fat loss?”
Walking is not cardio. It is physical activity you can do on a continuous basis. You need physical activity for fat loss. You don’t need cardio.
Physical activity and cardio are two different things.
Many people look at exercise through a window. They look at it through a 45 minute – 1 hour session where they are going for a maximum caloric burn.
Again, tracking how many calories you burn through exercise is a useless fat loss strategy because of the energy conservation principle.
Tracking how many steps you take throughout the course of the entire day is far more effective for fat loss than tracking your energy expenditure from a 1 hour run.
Walking is just not an exercise you can hate on.
- It doesn’t take willpower to walk
- Walking doesn’t interfere with training recovery
- Walking can be down for long periods of time without burnout
- You can still be productive with other tasks as you walk
- You can still hold a conversation as you walk
- You can still burn calories throughout the day as you walk throughout the day
If you need a more compelling argument as to why walking is so great, go to this article Why Walking is the Best Exercise for Long-Term Fat Loss.
4. Stop Lifting Weights 5-6 Days a Week
Frequent weight-training sessions has been shown to cause significant increases in cortisol levels.
Why is this the case?
When you’re in a caloric deficit with the intention of losing bodyfat, you are also in a recovery deficit.
Muscle recovery is slower in a deficit compared to eating at maintenance or a surplus. You are not eating enough calories to recover from a lot of training. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to do a lot of training
Please don’t misunderstand. Cortisol spikes are beneficial during the duration of the workout, but chronically high cortisol is bad for post-workout recovery.
You as a natural lifter cannot recover optimally on a 5-6 day a week training regimen. The central nervous system needs at least 48-72 hours of rest in between lifting sessions to recharge.
This is why a 3-day training split is best for naturals.
- You can train more muscle groups per session
- You get long periods of recovery, which allows you to grow stronger and smash personal records faster.
Many people wonder if they can build muscle with only 3 workouts a week.
What is required for building muscle is progressive overload.
If you can add weight to major compound movement for a 5-rep max and do this over a period of several months or years, there is no question that you are building muscle.
If you limit your strength training sessions to just 3 days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or whatever days work with your lifestyle, cortisol will be better managed in a calorie deficit.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of cutting back training, this article is highly recommended The Fitness and Lifestyle Benefits of Training Only 3 Days a Week.
5. Spend Time Eating at Maintenance Calories
The final tip here is to incorporate a planned period of maintaining your weight. It’s not conductive for good cortisol management to be in a caloric deficit all year around.
There should be a period of at least 1-3 months where you are eating at maintenance and taking a break from fat loss dieting.
Weight loss plateaus are a real thing, and you will experience them. Metabolic adaptation is a real thing, and you will experience it.
Let’s take this scenario. You are a 5’10 male, who successfully cut from 220 Lbs. down to 195 Lbs., but your goal bodyweight is 180 Lbs. For some reason you can’t break past 195.
You know you been consistent with eating in a deficit for several months, strength training, getting sufficient protein, maintaining a high step count, and staying on top of your sleep.
In this situation, you would spend at least 1-3 months eating whatever calories it would take to maintain 195 Lbs.
You would keep your protein intake the same, but your calories from carbohydrates and fats would increase.
When you do this:
- Leptin hormone will go back up
- Training performance will improve
- Testosterone levels will improve
- Cortisol will go down
- You will feel better
It’s important to remember you would have to re-calculate your new maintenance calories. If you went from 220 to 195, you lost 25 pounds, so your metabolism would have declined a bit.
Once you master maintaining your current weight for a month or a few months, then you can resume at a deficit.
If you have no idea what your maintenance calories are, use this calculator to help you figure it out.
If you want to learn more about the importance of maintenance phases, check out this article Eating Maintenance Calories for Muscle Growth and Fat Loss.
Conclusion
The main points of this article are:
- Make sure your sleep is dialed in
- Stop doing cardio. It’s not effective for sustainable fat loss
- Go for walks outside. It will improve your mood and reduce stress
- Limit your workouts to just 3 a week. Do not train 2 days in a row.
- Incorporate maintenance periods when weight loss plateaus or you have been in a caloric deficit for too long
These may not be cortisol-reducing methodologies that are commonly talked about, but if you test these strategies on yourself, you will see better fat loss in the long-term.
If you want to learn more about other hormones you need to manage for weight loss, give this article a read 7 Hormones You Must Manage on a Weight Loss Program.