Cortisol, Menopause & the Stress-Weight Connection Nobody Talks About

Why won't the weight budge — even when you're doing everything right?

If you've been eating well, moving your body, and still feeling frustrated by the number on the scale, there's a piece of the puzzle most people completely overlook: stress.

In this episode of Fit and Fabulous, Dr. Orlena breaks down the powerful — and often invisible — relationship between chronic stress, hormones, and weight gain, with a special focus on how menopause turns the dial up even further.

You'll discover:

• Why cortisol is your body's homemade steroid — and how it drives stubborn belly fat even when your diet is on point
• How menopause rewires your stress response — the surprising reason you feel more anxious, reactive, and sleepless than ever before, and why it's not "just in your head"
• The mindset shift that changes everything — why stress isn't just what happens to you, but how you think about what happens to you, and how reframing your inner narrative can lower cortisol, break the stress cycle, and get you back on track for good

This episode is honest, practical, and genuinely eye-opening. Whether you're navigating menopause, struggling with sleep, or simply exhausted by the constant hum of everyday stress, Dr. Orlena will help you understand what's really going on in your body — and what you can actually do about it.

Your path to Healthy Amazing You starts here.

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Transcript

 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing today. Today we are going to be talking about stress and how stress is involved in menopause and weight loss, weight gain, all of those things. I think it's actually one of the pieces. That is a little bit overlooked by people and I'm definitely not saying that it is the only thing that we need to pay attention to, but it is one of the pieces of the puzzle.

But first, before we dive into stress and all things stress related and exciting announcement, I have a program which is called the Eat Smart System. And it's a fabulous program except I never really tell anybody about it, and it sits. On my website being amazing with very few people knowing about it.

So I have decided that I'm gonna brush it off, change how I [00:01:00] sell it, so I'm gonna break it down and make it really, really, really affordable so that anybody who is interested in making changes. This is an absolute no brainer. So this program is for you. It's not ready yet. It will be ready in the next few weeks.

It is for you if you are somebody who's really interested in coaching, but that just feels a little bit of a stretch in terms of budget right now. This is a fabulous place to start, or it's for you if you think Yeah, actually. I don't wanna coach, I just wanna do it by myself. Again, a great thing, and it's really exactly the same things that I am teaching in my coaching program.

So basically how to get to what I call healthy, amazing you, and looking at the four pillars, so nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mindset. I will give you more details. Next podcast. If you are on my email list, that is the best place I will update my email list. It's always the first place that I send all my goodies to, so keep [00:02:00] a look out for that.

As I say, it's not quite ready yet, but I am busy working on it. Okay. Stress, by the way, you may not have noticed, but I am actually going through a series of podcasts. In a sequential way, diving into all the things that are important in health and wellness, getting to healthy, amazing you. However, you need to take out the guest ones that I have.

So if you go back and look at the ones I've done this year, which is just me, they are all lined up. I have a plan. Ha. Okay, stress. Why is stress so important? Now, as I say, stress is one of the pieces of the puzzle. Normally, it is not the only piece of the puzzle that is not maximized, shall we say. So I speak to lots of people who, whose eating could be [00:03:00] improved, whose exercise could be more consistent, et cetera.

I have met people who are eating, ticking all the boxes, exercising, ticking all the boxes, and still feeling frustrated that they aren't losing weight. But they have been super, super stressed and their stress has really had a knock on effect on not being able to lose weight. That is what we are talking about today, understanding what is going on, why stress is a piece of the puzzle, and understanding how this fits into menopause.

So to be perfectly honest, stress can be part of this picture even before menopause, or if you're male. And actually stress isn't just about weight loss. It can be about diseases as well. I remember doing a podcast on heart [00:04:00] disease and talking to a cardiologist and her saying, you know, that person who is thin, who looks healthy, and then they have a heart attack that is stress.

Stress is not good for our health, or rather chronic stress is not good for our health. A little bit of stress is perfectly fine and like most things in life, it is a little bit of balance. So the good thing about stress is stress leads us to do stuff. If there was no stress in life, we would just sit around going, oh, another day.

That's it. I'm just hanging around doing nothing. Stress is one of the things that motivates us to do stuff, and this is good, but the reality is that we live in a life style, that we are looking at chronic stress. So if we look at stress in, its like pure form. [00:05:00] Stress is really great when you are running away from a tiger, right?

Yeah. We wanna feel stressed, we want to be focused, we want to be really blinkered. On running away from the tiger, but in modern day, we're stuck in traffic. That's not a tiger. Or we don't know what to cook for dinner. That's not a tiger. We've got all these chronic stresses and they add up. And add up. Now before we go any further, I do want to point out that we do see stress as big stresses.

So somebody is ill, my mortgage, my job's on the line. All of these things are big stresses. And then what I call mundane stresses. What should I cook for dinner? Oh my goodness, my child's t-shirt is dirty that they need, oh my goodness, I've forgotten to do my homework. Kids. All of those kind of things, those mundane stresses, which on one level we dismiss as unimportant, but the reality is that.

Those stresses still add up and have the [00:06:00] same effect on our body. Which if it's too much is not great. So let's have a think about how our body works. We have something called the sympathetic nervous system. And when I think about these names, I always think they should be the other way round, but they're not.

The sympathetic nervous system is the bit that makes us run the flight. Fight, fright, running away. Action, action, action. And then we have what is called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is relax, let go, and. That gives our body time to do certain things, and we need a balance of both. We don't want to be always in the parasympathetic nervous system, and we don't want to be always in the sympathetic nervous system.

We want a balance of these two. We want some action and some relax, but the reality is. That mostly in life these days. We live in the sympathetic nervous system and we just discount the relaxation, the [00:07:00] parasympathetic bit and just go, oh, I haven't got time for that today, because we are not looking at the importance of it.

So all stress is included, and when we think about what impact does this have, does it have an impact on weight? There are different reasons why it impacts our weight. So number one, when we are stressed, our stress hormone is cortisol. Cortisol is very similar to hydroco cortisol,

so if you know anybody who has been on long-term steroids, you know that one of the side effects is truncal obesity, and that's basically cortisol is our own. Homemade steroid, which causes truncal obesity. So we know that cortisol will increase truncal obesity. But also there are other things like when we're stressed, we don't sleep as [00:08:00] well.

We know that sleep is so important for our long-term health and wellness, but also sleep is really important in terms of weight loss. If you have one bad night's sleep. Your cortisol level goes up, your insulin levels go up, your hunger levels go up, and on top of that, you feel grotty and not great. And it makes doing things like exercise and perhaps going out of your way to find healthy foods.

Much more difficult when we've had a bad night's sleep. We just wanna wrap ourselves in a blanket and mindlessly shovel food into our mouth. I know that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's what happens. And if we think about one bad night's sleep, that's one thing. But if we think night, after night after night, we are having.

Bad sleep. Think of the impact that is happening. And yes, there's lots of reasons why we might have bad sleep. One of them might [00:09:00] be that we don't actually prioritize our sleep. We don't give ourselves enough time to sleep. The number of people I talk to who say, yeah, I go to bed at midnight and I get up at six and I'm like, it's gonna make it difficult for you to have eight hours sleep then, isn't it really?

You've only in bed for six hours. So one thing is we do need to prioritize. Our sleep. But there are many reasons why even if we give ourselves the opportunity to have a good night's sleep, we might not. Okay. Hello menopause. We'll talk about that in a second. But stress is another thing. You know when you wake up in the middle of your night and your brain is churning and suddenly you are thinking about stuff that is stress.

When we are stressed, we turn to food for comfort. What kind of foods do we turn to? We always turn to sugary foods, so cravings are increased. Another reason that stress impacts us is when we are thinking about exercise. Exercise is all about the recovery. So this is [00:10:00] a really good example of when we want this interplay between our sympathetic and our parasympathetic nervous system.

When we are exercising, we are in the sympathetic. Nervous system. We are putting stress on our body, healthy stress on our body. If you're doing it in a good way, when do we get the changes? When are we building the muscle and getting those adaptive changes to our cardiovascular system. When we're recovering, when we are in the parasympathetic nervous system.

So if we aren't getting that balance right, if we are constantly in stress, we are not giving our body enough time to recover, which means we aren't gonna see the changes that we're putting all that effort into. There's lots of things that are going on when it comes to stress, and then on top of that, let's think about menopause and hormonal changes and stress.

So when we think about this [00:11:00] period of our life, it is often a period of time, which is stressful. We've got kids. Who might be teenagers? Oh my goodness. I have four teenage kids and they are stressful. I'm telling you, they're stressful. Thinking about them going off going into the wide world can be stressful.

It might be that we have elderly parents that we need to look after. It might be that other people in our family are unwell. We're getting to that stage where, yeah, this is happening. We are beginning to see people, friends, not being so well. There are, we've got to work. We haven't retired yet. We've got all of these things going on.

So it is a really stressful time of our life, but also those hormonal changes have an impact here as well. For example, estrogen is, they has a calming effect on. And when we lose that estrogen, it's almost like we have lost that calming [00:12:00] effect. So for example, you will notice people feeling more stress, more anxiety, more angry.

Because they've lost the estrogen. It's not necessarily the total loss of estrogen. Often it is the fluctuation of estrogen. And obviously not everybody goes through this. Our brains emotional centers become more reactive. So we are thinking about our amygdala and our prefrontal cortex, which help us to, helps us to regulate emotions and keep things, keep our reactions more balanced and.

These things that didn't use to trigger us before now trigger us, and it's really about a change in brain chemistry. Now, I talked about sleep before, but menopause also has an extra impact on sleep in terms of many people find that they can't sleep because they're getting night sweats.

And are in lighter sleep. So on top of all of this, we've also got problems with [00:13:00] our sleep and stress and sleep or stress and lack of sleep go hand in hand. And they create this vicious circle because you get stressed, you can't sleep, and then you don't have the capacity to get yourself back on track.

And then you are worried about the fact that you haven't. Had enough sleep and you're stressing about not having sleep. Whoever has laid awake at night going, oh my goodness, I'm so stressed. I need to go to sleep. I need to go to sleep. Like it just doesn't work, does it? But that's what happens. We end up with these vicious cycles in our brain and on top of that as well.

Our blood sugar levels become less stable, so we get more ups and downs in our blood sugar, which doesn't help the whole situation. And can make us want to eat sugar more and more. So it's all a big hog podge of stuff that is going on. And as I say, I think a lot of people really underestimate stress and think.

Stress isn't important. It's just something I've always had in my life and I've even seen other people on the [00:14:00] internet going, stress has got nothing to do with it. And I personally hugely disagree. I am not saying that yes, we don't need to eat healthily. We need to exercise. Exercise is one of the best ways of reducing stress because when you are really exercising.

Your brain is focused on your body, it's focused on breathing. It's focused on moving your muscles. It is not focused on whatever is causing you to feel stress. So exercise is an amazing tool for stress. But one of the other things really to add in here is that actually stress is how we think about things.

And one thing that I think is that. Mindset is really important when it comes to leading a healthy life and when it comes to losing weight, and part of it is understanding stress. Now, I am not saying that we will ever get to the stage where [00:15:00] we have zero stress in life. I don't think that is something that we either want or is realistic, but we can definitely bring stress down into a more manageable place.

By understanding how we are thinking about it. And the bottom line is this. Most people are thinking, what if Worst case scenario, what goes through their brain is the worst case scenario. What if. As opposed to the best case scenario, what if, or a middle ground? What if catastrophizing, as my husband calls it, you are always catastrophizing.

You're always thinking about the worst possible case. And I know that I'm not alone in this, and I've actually taught myself not to do that. Stress is how we think about this. Let me give you two examples. You're stuck in traffic. The same person stuck in traffic. You're going to be late for a meeting. [00:16:00] One person who is stuck in the traffic is thinking, oh my goodness, I'm going to be late.

It's going to be a disaster. My boss is going to be crossed with me. I'm going to lose this big deal that I'm getting, or, I don't know, whatever. What are they feeling? They are feeling stressed. The other person. Yeah. Okay. They can see that there are negative consequences to being late, but they can also see that there is nothing that they can do about it.

They accept the situation and so when you accept a situation, it stops being this thing that you have to fight about it. So they accept it and think I'm stuck in traffic. I might as well listen to Dr. Alina's podcast, hooray, or some music or whatever. I'm gonna sit back and I'm gonna enjoy this, and I'm gonna think of all the positives that can come outta this.

I didn't like that meeting anyhow. It might give my junior a chance to step into that role of leading that meeting. It might be really good for them. [00:17:00] You can see how two people thinking different things about the same situation. One is stressed, one is not stressed, one has reduced their stress, even if they haven't a hundred percent got rid of it.

So one person's cortisol is gonna be high, the other person's cortisol less high. So it is a complex thing. It isn't as easy as oh, I've got this great thing, I'm gonna turn off my stress. No, there's so many different things that we can do for stress, but the bottom foundation is understanding how we think about things and how being in that place of.

Worst case scenario, what if is not a helpful place to be and it is not helping you get to healthy amazing you. It isn't helping you lose the extra wobble if that's what you want to do, and it isn't helping you to be healthy and strong. Having all of that cortisol [00:18:00] is not optimal for us. The other place that I really see.

Stress stroke mindset play into this puzzle is that one thing that happens to people is they get derailed. So they think, this isn't working. Why should I do this? And they stop doing it. Whereas the way we think about things is what actually means, yeah, this is non-negotiable. I'm doing this, or I can deal with this stress.

I can keep going. That keeping going is one of the key things. Keeping maintaining your exercise, you don't have to do it perfectly. Keep maintaining healthy eating. You don't have to do it perfectly, but you do need to be consistent and how we think about things. Will determine whether you can pick yourself up and get back on track and get back on track.

So I know that's not a hundred percent related to stress, but it is often stress that derails us. And if you have that self-awareness to [00:19:00] be able to go, yep. I can pick myself up and get back on track. You are good to go. So how do we fix all of this? Okay. I'm only gonna tell you briefly, we're gonna dive into this later on, but essentially it is the four pillars and they are all interconnected.

Nutrition pillar one, nutrition, you pi, pillar two, exercise pillar three, sleep and pillar four, emotional wellness, stroke, stress, how we think about all of these things. And all of these things are connected and it's a bit like a stool. You can't just chop off one leg of a three pillar stool and go, yeah.

It's not gonna work. You have to pay attention to all of them. It's not like one secret thing that you have to do in one of these things. It's changes in all of them, tweaks in all of them. So I hope this has helped you see things in a different light. If nothing else, I would love you to. See where you are thinking worst case scenario, what if and stop yourself and go, [00:20:00] okay, what about best case scenario?

What if can I think about that as well? Can I give it as much space in my brain as I give worst case scenario? What if? So have a lovely week and I will see you in a couple of weeks.