If You Don't Understand Cortisol, You Don't Understand Fat Loss

Cortisol is not making you fat or stopping you from losing fat, but it does do a very good job of hiding the fat you've already lost. And that's why so many people end up quitting on their diet. After coaching over 25,000 people, I can tell you the number one reason people fall off track with their diet and weight loss isn't because they're seeing great progress and they stop. It's because they're not seeing progress fast enough. They're putting in all of this work and not feeling like it's paying off for them. So today I am doing a deep dive on cortisol, what it actually is, what it actually does to your fat loss and how it impacts it, how it impacts your recovery, bloating, stomach fat, sleep, muscle tissue. I'm going to tell you what's real and true. I'm going to tell you what's been, quite frankly, sold to you on Instagram and made up that is not actually true. And I'm going to spend a big chunk of this time also going through things like perimenopause, because this is where most misinformation around cortisol is held. And quite frankly, it pisses me off, and I'll tell you why it makes me so mad. So by the end of this episode, you will know exactly what cortisol is, what's happening in your body when your cortisol is elevated, What is not true and who's lying to you. And most importantly, you'll leave this episode being able to see much faster, easier, simpler fat loss progress than ever before. So the first section, what is cortisol and what does it actually do? Now, the problem here is if you've been on social media in the past year, you've been told that cortisol is the enemy and this is why you look puffy. This is why you're bloated. This is why you're tired. You can't lose your belly. And conveniently, somebody always has a special supplement or a special protocol or a special diet that you can then, oh, follow this and you'll lower your cortisol. So here's the truth: your body would actually die without cortisol. Literally, your body would stop functioning because what cortisol actually is is a stress Hormone. But do not think of stress only as, you know, your, your, your boss emailing you at 9:00 PM at night having to fix a project, or your kids stressing you out. Think of it as any stress that you're— that pulls your body out of balance, that pulls your body out of what is called the parasympathetic nervous system state. So a hard workout is stress. A calorie deficit is stress. Bad sleep is stress. Getting sick is stress. Yes, your email inbox is stress. You watching videos about cortisol telling you you're never gonna lose your body fat and you're in perimenopause and that's why you can't lose weight, that is stress. And so cortisol is what also gets you woken up and out of bed to have energy in the morning. Morning. Most people don't know, but your cortisol should actually spike very high in the morning because that's when you wake up. That's when you get your day going. That's when you're supposed to be awake. And then as the night— day/night kind of tapers on, your cortisol levels will taper down and your cortisol levels should drop as you get later in the day because you then want to get ready for bed and you kind of— your body's able to do it all over again the next day. And it pulls sugar into your blood so you have the adequate energy that you need. It also controls inflammation. It keeps your blood pressure where it needs to be. So when someone says you should lower your cortisol, what they're, what they're really saying is like, you should lower chronic elevated cortisol levels. And the analogy I kind of wrote down here for this was you can think of cortisol like the smoke alarm in your house. When it goes off because there is an actual fire, that alarm just saved your house. That's a good alarm. It's doing its job. The problem is not the alarm. The problem is when you— maybe you're not a great cook and you burn toast every single morning for 2 years straight, and that Smoke alarm never stops going off. Your house isn't really on fire, but nobody is solving the problem of you being a terrible cook in this situation. So you don't solve the problem by just ripping out the smoke alarm. You still want the smoke alarm. You solve the problem by figuring out why you keep burning the toast. You're putting the temperature too high, you're putting too much oil on it. I don't even know how you would burn— you know, you cook toast, but you're leaving it in the toaster for too long, whatever it is. It's So that is basically this whole episode in one sentence. You do not want to torn— torn? Turn cortisol off. We want to figure out why yours might be going off and chronically elevated all day long. And so, as I mentioned earlier, there is acute cortisol and chronic cortisol. You might want to either write this down or really try to remember this. Listen to it a few times. The word I need you to understand, because it's going to come up, is acute, which acute just means short-term and temporary, and chronic means it's been going on for a long time and it's not letting up, it's not going down. So acute cortisol might look something like a really hard set of squats. It might be a stressful meeting. It might be your first 1 or 2 weeks in a calorie deficit. That is, that's normal and that's healthy. That's your body working. Chronic cortisol elevated might look something like 5 months of 5 hours of sleep per night, 6 boot camp classes for 6 months straight, 1,200 calories since March. These are these more chronic cortisol in your body, and this is where most of the problems tend to show up. Because I don't want to say nobody, but a lot of people listening may not have a cortisol problem. You have a recovery problem, and the recovery problem is showing up as a cortisol problem. And this is where it can be actually really beneficial to get your blood work done and see not only your cortisol levels, but also see the other recovery markers in your body, like inflammation, like your thyroid, like other parts of your metabolism. And so, I actually recently got my blood work done through a company called Merrick Health, which I partnered with. So, if you haven't gotten your blood work done in a while and maybe you're curious about some of these things, I would definitely say it's worth it. It's not cheap by any means, but if you were to do the exact blood work panel that I had that is done through Merrick Health, you would pay thousands of dollars through like Quest or LabCorp or something to piece it all together. And so I actually partnered with Merrick Health and we have a little discount rate that you would be able to use. So there'll be a link in the description of the podcast below. Just click on the podcast, go to the description, and then click on that link. Or you're gonna shoot me an email at coacheric@ericrobertsfitness.com. Would love to see if I might be able to help you out. But It's good to get blood work done, but that brings us into section number 2, which is why the scale might lie and why cortisol may hide fat loss. Not stop, but hide. So the problem here is, you know, you, you started, you started tracking your food, you're hitting your protein, you're doing your walks, you're getting your workouts, you're doing everything right, and the scale is the same exact number, or It might even have gone up. And so you decide your metabolism is broken, your hormones are broken, you are broken, your plan isn't working. You gotta lower your calories, you've gotta do more intense workouts, and eventually you'll just end up quitting. Because most people get burnt out from their diet, like I mentioned earlier, not because everything's going great and they're seeing Amazing progress. They get burnt out because they feel like they're putting in all of this effort and this hard work day over day, and the result is not matching that hard work. And, and trust me, I can relate to this in different areas of my life, whether it be fitness, whether it be business, whether it be content at times. So I understand where you're coming from, but that leads to the burnout and that leads you to end up quitting. And even though the scale isn't going down as fast as you would like, you're not failing. You're just currently getting fooled by water because here's what's actually happening. When your cortisol goes up, it tells your kidneys to hold on to sodium, and the more sodium you hold on to, the more water weight you will hold on to. And that's the mechanism, mechanism of why cortisol may lead to the first few weeks of you being on a deficit. Your body is quite literally saying, hey, we're getting less food than we are used to. We're getting less food than what is needed to maintain our weight. That is a stress. So your cortisol nudges up, and that would lead you to hold on. to some short-term water weight. And at the same time, if you just started lifting properly, your muscles are going to be inflamed and pulling in water and nutrients to repair those muscles, which means you're going to store more water weight. And your body and muscles also store carbohydrates, especially if you have more muscle, because Muscles store carbs as energy. So now your muscles are going to pull in more carbs, which also pulls in more water. So you could actually be losing a pound of fat per week and holding on to 3 pounds of water. The scale will tell you you gained 2 pounds, and the scale's not lying. It's true. It just doesn't know the difference between fat Muscle, and water. And you can think of this like a sponge sitting in your kitchen sink. When you squeeze all the water out, the sponge gets smaller. But if you let it sit back down in a puddle of water, it will soak the water right back up, and it looks exactly the same size as before. So your fat cells do this too. When fat leaves the cell, the cell doesn't just vanish into nowhere. It temporarily also fills with water and it sits there looking the exact same. And one day it lets go of all of it all at once. This is what we call the whoosh effect. That's why people might drop 3, 4, 5, 6 pounds overnight out of nowhere. And they even think like, oh, the scale's broken, that didn't actually happen. No, that's— that happened. It's not broken. You just finally squeezed the sponge. To let all of that water out. So knowing this, what do we actually do about it? And these are things that— these are exact things that we do with our online coaching clients in our 8-week fat loss challenge. So I'm not holding anything back from you. This is exactly what we do with our clients. Number 1, weigh yourself every day and take the weekly average because you shouldn't be comparing your weigh-in to— from Tuesday to Friday That literally doesn't matter. What you would do is take all 7 days of the weigh-in, get the average for that week, and then compare that to the average of last week and the week before that and the week before that. Because now you can see, okay, we're heading into August, for example. So let's say you do this for the month of August. You're somebody who you're weighing 180 pounds. You want to get down to 150. So in the first week of August, your average weight is 180.7 pounds. You'll have fluctuations Fluctuations. Maybe you weigh 182 and then you weigh 179, but you have the average of 180.8. And then the next week you have an average of 179.4, and the next week you have an average of 178.2, and the next week you have an average of 176.5. So you, over the course of the month of August, your scale is going to fluctuate up and down, but the weekly average went down 1 pound per week. So you lost 4 pounds in the month of August, which by the way would be incredibly healthy fat loss progress as well. So that's number one. Number 2, take your waist measurement every 2 weeks. We typically like to go right below the belly button when you're doing this waist measurement, because if your waist measurement is going down, I don't care what the scale is doing, your body has to be letting go of fat if your waist measurement is going down. And if you have another form of data to tell you that progress is going in the right direction, you're much less likely to fail and quit because you actually see it's working. That alone is one of the many reasons why our online coaching clients not only see such great progress, but they sustain it and keep going with it in the long term. Because if you don't think you're making progress and you can't tell you're making progress, why would you want to keep going? And I'm just going to be real with you for a second because I've done this for over 10 years now. I don't care how many times I say it, you listening, you're probably not taking your waist measurement. Just be honest with yourself, you're not doing it. You're weighing yourself, you're stepping on the scale, but you're not taking your waist measurement every 2 weeks. Why? Because nobody's holding you accountable to it. You know you should do it. You know it would make sense. You know it would be motivating to see the number go down, but you're not doing it. Which is again one of the reasons why our clients sign up for the 8-week challenge is because we hold them accountable to actually do the things you know you're supposed to do. So that's number 2. Number 3, take progress pictures every 4 weeks. One from the front, one from the sides, one from the back. So 4 total progress pictures. And again, You probably know you should be doing this, and I would say some people do this, but not as consistently, especially if you've been off track for a couple days. Ah, well, I'll just push it to the week after. I'll just push it to next week. And you keep pushing it and putting it off and putting it off. And then eight weeks goes by, ten weeks goes by. You're like kind of eating healthy, but not really. You keep falling off track, and you've made no progress. So again, we hold you accountable to actually take your progress pictures every month because you know. If you're taking the progress pictures every month, no matter what, you're not putting it off. You think you're more likely or less likely to stay on track? More likely. Number 4 would be tracking your workouts, specifically your strength training workouts, because if your numbers keep going up and you're getting stronger, that means you are recovering properly, you are recovering well, and you're building muscle. And then number 5, your clothes. We might also have our clients sometimes pick out a specific pair of jeans, a specific dress, a specific suit, whatever they really want to fit into. And we'll also kind of measure progress based on how that specific item of clothes fits. Because again, some people, their waist measurement hasn't changed that much, their scale hasn't changed that much, they don't think they can see a big difference in their pictures, but they put on that old pair of jeans and it like fits perfectly. Is that or is that not progress? So now you have all these different ways to measure, track, and hold yourself accountable to these different layers of progress, which makes it more likely you're going to stay on track and more likely you will keep going because you visually see the progress happening. So really, if any of those things are moving in the right direction, regardless of what the scale says, you're, you're doing something right. And please Just keep going. And again, it's not to say you're not gonna overly fixate on the scale. We all do this to a degree, myself included. But our goal— if you were to sign up for coaching with us— our goal isn't to stop you from having an emotion about the scale. Our goal is to logically show you there's other forms of data and to shorten the amount of time that you have an emotional response to the scale. 'Cause if it used to ruin your entire day or throw off your entire week or weekend, if you can like be pissed about it for 10 minutes, but then just keep going on with your day, that is a win for us. And so again, if you're interested in, you're like, you kind of know these things, you know you should be doing these things, it makes sense, but you have nobody to hold you accountable so you actually do it and you're not holding yourself accountable, click the link in the description of the podcast or just Google Eric Roberts Fitness 8-Week Challenge. The link should pop up and you can apply to see if you're a great fit. So that leads us into section number 3, which is the cortisol belly and what is actually real versus what is just marketing and fearmongering. And the claim that you may have heard is, you know, you see these, these, these posts where they have the photos side by side and it's like, this isn't fat, this is just cortisol belly. And then it links you to some Cortisol reducing supplement. Da da da. You get the drift. So I'm gonna split this into what's actually true and what's being sold to you. So what is actually true is the fat around your organs, kind of like that visceral fat, the deep belly fat, does have more of the receptors that cortisol kind of plugs into. A receptor, which it just means like a little docking station. for that cell for the hormone to kind of lock onto. More docking stations means the area responds to more cortisol than the fat on your arms or your face does. So there is a real reason that belly fat gets talked about when it comes to cortisol, and that part is not made up. And your midsection is also where you typically feel Bloating, water retention, and digestion the most. So when cortisol is up in that area, that is the area where you will notice it first. So all of that can be true, but what is marketing/fearmongering is cortisol does not create fat out of nothing. There is no hormone on earth that can make a calorie appear. So the extreme version of this is where cortisol truly drives fat storage in the midsection is like a medical condition. It happens at cortisol levels far, far above what a stressed-out 40-year-old with 2 kids and a job is walking around with. What actually happens at your level is that high cortisol makes you hungrier, makes you sleep worse, makes you snack at night because you have higher cravings, especially for sugar and junk foods. And it makes you hold water. And so those things would pull you out of a calorie deficit and put you into a calorie surplus, along with the water weight that we already talked about earlier. So cortisol did not put fat on you. It may put weight from the scale in the short term for the water weight, but it didn't put fat on you. Cortisol would change your behavior, and your behavior put the weight on you. And quite frankly, that is a much better problem to, to have because you can fix behavior. And also, I want to take this to another extreme as well. And for whatever reason, sometimes when I say this, people get really mad at me, but it's just the truth, so I'm gonna keep saying it. Imagine people who are Incredibly stressed. Let's take people from the Holocaust, God forbid. I would argue those people were much more stressed out than you and I are. Would you agree? You go back and look at pictures of those people. Are they— do they have a cortisol belly? Do they hold on to belly fat because of their cortisol? No, they're skin and bones. Why? They're not fucking eating anything. So cortisol is not going to stop you From losing body fat. And so you can think of it— the analogy I wrote down was think of it like a thermostat in your house. The thermostat doesn't create heat. It's never once produced a single warmth, a degree of warmth. All it does is tell the furnace when to run. Cortisol is the thermostat. Your calories are the furnace. So people are out here trying to like cool their house down by yelling at the thermostat while the furnace runs full blast in the basement. So you can have a puffy midsection driven by stress and water and bad sleep. Absolutely. Can you fix that with a pill instead of a consistent calorie deficit? No. And anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something. Now, there are specific protocols that may help you, and there are specific regimens that can help you Lower chronic stress and lower chronic cortisol, and make it easier to get rid of the water weight. Make it easier to not have such high chronic elevated cortisol levels. Again, I'm not saying these things aren't true. I'm saying it's not going to stop you from losing body fat. It would just make it harder. And again, the good news is that the the the the puffy stress belly comes off faster than fat does, actually. And sometimes in a week, you just have to stop feeding it. The thing that is causing it. And so I wanna kind of get into the next section here where I wanna talk about some of the perimenopause stuff that I wrote down. And again, really quickly before I get into the perimenopause stuff, I'm talking about a calorie deficit here, and I think a lot of us know what that is, but I have a free calorie calculator. If you just click the link in the description of the podcast, it's the same one that I use with our online coaching clients. And so If you are interested, you can click the link below and, uh, go ahead and check that out. But going into the perimenopause section, and I think this is where it irks me and it kind of makes me mad because I feel like this is the section and this is kind of the, the topic where a lot of people prey on other people and their emotions and their frustrations and their insecurities. And so if you're somebody who you're in you know, your, your 30s, 40s, early 50s, and you feel like your body has kind of stopped responding to the exact same things that used to work, I want to say something first. You're not imagining it. Something probably has changed, and you're not crazy, you're not lazy, you're not making excuses. And I think the fitness industry has done You dirty in 2 different directions, which is one side just tells you nothing has changed, you need to try harder. It's very dismissive, and it's— in, in my opinion, it's wrong. But then the other side tells you that your hormones are the only thing in charge and there's nothing you can do without their protocol. And in my opinion, that's even worse. Because it takes your control away. If you're not in control of something, and no matter how hard you work, no matter what you do, you're not going to be able to change it, why would you do anything to change it? Why would you stick to something long enough to change it? Why would you continue to push yourself in something that's not actually going to get you a result? If you— it's called self-efficacy. It's called like believing that you're actually going to make progress. If you don't do that, why would you keep going? It's like if I was doing this podcast and I do all the stuff that I do for my business content, the, the talking to people, just everything. If I didn't believe that it was actually going to work, I can tell you, I— this takes every single thing out of me, and I wouldn't keep going unless I truly believed it was going to pay off and work. And you won't either. And so the truth is it's, it's somewhere in the middle. And the middle is actually really hopeful because in perimenopause, what actually changes, which by the way, perimenopause, most people who have it know this, but it just means the years leading up to menopause when your hormones start swinging around. And it typically does 3 things that matter for what we're talking about today, which is number one, Your estrogen starts kind of dropping and swinging. Estrogen can have a calming effect on your nervous system, so when it drops, your cortisol response tends to run a little higher and take longer to come back down. Number 2, sleep usually gets worse. You might have night sweats, you're waking up all throughout the night, not going back to sleep, and bad sleep is one of the biggest cortisol drivers there is. And number 3, where your body fat stores shifts. So lower estrogen tends to also move storage from like your hips and your thighs to midsection. And that happens independent of cortisol. So you can weigh the same and look different. Actually, funny enough, we just had somebody, one of our clients post this in our group who's been with us for over 3 years and they've seen great progress. And You know, she's kind of getting into her 50s, and she was like, guys, I'm starting to notice like more lower belly fat. I haven't changed my diet, I haven't changed what I'm doing, but like, what's going on here? So, so yes, the same calories, the same effort, it feels harder. That is real. And here's how I want you to maybe think about it. You've been driving the same route to work for 20 years, and it took you 30 minutes. And then they put a construction zone in the middle of it, and now that same drive takes you 45 minutes. The road didn't disappear, your car didn't break, you're still getting to work. You just have to leave a little earlier in the morning and don't be surprised if there's some traffic. And so perimenopause is kind of like that construction zone. It's not a road closure. And so I think the part that actually matters here is perimenopause does not Again, repeal the laws of physics. You will still lose fat in a calorie deficit. Every single one of our clients in this stage of life proves it. And not sure how much you listen to my podcast or not, but we have done at this point hundreds, if not— Yeah, definitely hundreds of podcasts with our clients, and a lot of them have talked about their journey through perimenopause. Our most recent one Is our client Leanne, which when you're listening to this podcast, I think was released last week. So go and take a peek at that. So it works, but what changes is the margin for error. You can't get away with sloppy sleep anymore. You can't get away with 6 hard classes of boot camps every single week. You can't get away with skipping protein. You can't get away with just drinking as much alcohol as you want. And you absolutely cannot get away with not lifting weights on a proper strength training program because you're also at this stage losing muscle and bone density, and lifting will be the only thing that can meaningfully push back on both of those. And so the answer typically isn't eat less food and do more cardio. It's usually more protein, more lifting, more sleep, a smaller calorie deficit, more low-intensity cardio and walking. And it feels backwards, but it works. And again, you can listen to the podcast with Leanne after you get done this one. And also, I was going through our community where all of our clients are, and I saw one of our clients, June, posted this. She went from 175 pounds and a size 12 to 132 pounds and a size 6. Wow. She didn't do it in eight weeks. She did it in about two years, in her forties, in perimenopause. And she went and got a DEXA scan, which is a body scan that actually shows you your fat and your muscle, not just a number on the scale. And everything came back exactly where it should be for her age. She didn't lose muscle. She didn't wreck her metabolism. She did it the right way. And I believe she she's forty-six now, if I'm not mistaken. And a line from a post that she made. I love it, and I'm paraphrasing, but she basically said it can be done in perimenopause. And again, we had so many client examples to prove this. She's in maintenance now and she's focusing on getting stronger. And she said, you know, she's not gonna miss a calorie deficit, which like, same, I'm in one right now and it's, you know, not as fun as not being in a calorie deficit. But 43 pounds, 6 dress sizes in perimenopause, showing that she kept muscle. This proves it's not a hormone problem because the person who has a real plan and they stick to it, they will see progress. And I promise you, that's not the outlier. That is reality if you do the right things. And again, if you want help doing the right things, we have done this for hundreds of late thousands of ladies at this point and just over 25,000 clients since 2016. So If you're interested in finally getting help, stop trying on your own, stop wasting more time, frustration, disappointment, exhaustion. Number 1, you can join our 8-week challenge, link below, or Google Eric Roberts Fitness 8-week challenge. And number 2, again, this is where I would recommend you get some blood work done because I do believe you can find out some helpful and valuable insights to the specific changes that you need to make. And Actually, recently I did a podcast with the Merrick Health professionals as well, so you can check that out if you would like. I think it's maybe last podcast or 2 podcasts ago. So all of this to be said, I want to go into the next section, which is kind of talking about low energy, bad move, and bad mood, and the flat cortisol curve. So a problem a lot of people face is you're kind of tired all day, but then you're wired at night. You have to drag yourself out of bed You have to drink the coffee, you hit a wall around midday, and then lie down at night to go to sleep. And it like, you're just wired, you can't go to sleep. That's not a personality trait. That is typically a broken cortisol curve. Because again, what is supposed to happen, your cortisol is supposed to follow a daily rhythm. It's going to spike about 30 to 45 minutes after you wake up, and then it slides down all day and typically hits its lowest point is like around when? You go to bed. So high in the morning, low at night. That is a healthy curve. But when you are chronically stressed and you're undersleeping and you're hammering your body with these very high-intensity workouts, that curve flattens. So it doesn't get very high in the morning and it doesn't get low enough at night. Think of it like a dimmer switch on like a dining room light. It's supposed to go bright in the morning and like kind of slowly dim down as the night goes on. And turn off. A flat cortisol curve is like a dimmer switch that got just kind of like stuck in the middle. It doesn't ever get really bright and it never gets dark. It's just kind of like there at the same spot all day long. And so for the mood part of this, when your cortisol is doing this all day, you're more irritable. You have a shorter fuse. Small things feel enormous. You snap at your kids. You feel like garbage about it, which is more stress. You can't focus at work. The scale goes up and now you're super pissed over it. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you like, oh, drink a protein shake and like drop some body fat and it's going to fix your mental health. Like, yeah, you could talk to a mental health professional for sure. But what I am saying is improving your sleep, not being in such an aggressive calorie deficit, not working out to the point of where you can't recover from it. All of these things are going to help you change how you feel about your entire life, which then makes it easier to stick to your calorie deficit. It makes it easier to not feel so stressed about it. The scale won't get to you as much. You're not going to be so anxious about going out to eat on the weekends. It just— it makes everything flow that much better, which again will make it easier and more simple to stick to your calorie deficit long term. And so we talked about these a little bit earlier. I'll go a little bit more in depth into them. And that is what is actually raising your cortisol and making it chronically elevated. And again, before I list some of these things, just take a second to think like, how many of these are you currently doing? And if you're listening and you're like, wow, I'm doing 3 of these things, 4 of these things, 5 of these things, and you are not Liking the progress that you are seeing, or lack thereof, maybe something to consider changing. So the analogy I wrote down was like, picture a bathtub with like 5 faucets leading into one drain at the bottom. The water is your cortisol, the drain is your recovery. So sleep, food, rest days, walking. Most people try to fix this, run around trying to plug one false Faucet while the other 4 are still wide open and the drain is basically closed. So you're not going to empty the bathtub by like buying a supplement. You've got to turn off the faucets or turn them down to then open up the drain more. So faucet 1 is your workouts, 5 or 6 high-intensity workouts, classes a week. I love that you want to work hard, but it's not discipline or dedication. It's usually just a cortisol drip You're voluntarily hooked up to. And again, what the research tells us is that cortisol spikes hard after a high-intensity session and stays up for, you know, maybe an hour, 2 or 3 afterwards. And if you do that 6 days a week, on top of the normal stress in your life, on top of being in a calorie deficit, on top of not sleeping, this is where your cortisol becomes chronically elevated. And This is why I always have said 3 or 4 proper strength training workouts per week and maybe 1 high-intensity day if you love it. That's it. That's all you need. And quite frankly, that is the most optimal. I know it's hard to conceptualize doing less is going to get you better results, but that is the case because you can't recover from it. Faucet number 2 is, like I mentioned, your calorie deficit is too aggressive. A chronic stress on your body is a chronic intense calorie deficit. A smaller calorie deficit is a manageable stress. So if you've been eating 1,200 calories, doing an hour of cardio, getting 5 hours of sleep, you're not being disciplined. You're just stacking these stressors and wondering why you feel terrible, holding on to water weight, look puffy. What would actually be discipline is you only doing 3 to 4 strength training sessions per week, eating in a more moderate calorie deficit. You don't want to do those things, which is why it's actually discipline if you do them. So a smaller calorie deficit can actually hold— that you can actually hold for 8 weeks beats a giant calorie deficit you quit every 10 fucking days. So faucet number 3 is sleep. So even a few short sleep— short nights of sleep pushes your evening cortisol up and messes with the hormone that controls your hunger, which is ghrelin. So you get hungrier and less satisfied on the same amount of food. So no, you don't lack willpower at night. You need to go the fuck to bed and get sleep. Again, it's not discipline and willpower and all these things you've been told. It's Physiologically in your body, there are certain things happening that are making it incredibly harder for you to stick to your plan. Faucet 4, cutting your carbs down to nothing. So training very hard on almost no carbs raises your cortisol because your body needs the fuel, and if you don't give it any, it goes and finds it. But that process can be stressful. So carbs aren't the enemy. Carbs actually around your workout help you handle the stress better. And again, I know people have told you that you shouldn't be eating carbs, and that's what, you know, belly fat and bloating— especially carbs around your workouts can actually help you with this cortisol spiking. And then faucet number 5 is just life, you know, like work, kids, money, aging parents, whatever it is. You're not going to be able to remove a lot of these stresses, and I'm not going to tell you to, but what I think you can do is just Try to open the drain so you're able to handle the water out of that faucet better. So for example, this is why I'm such a fan of just taking daily walks— 10, 20, 30 minutes— just getting outside, getting away from technology, getting away from the screens, getting away from being constantly plugged in to the news or your job or whatever it is. It lowers your cortisol and it can go a long way For you to be able to again improve the rest of your life. And it's free. You don't gotta buy a fucking supplement. So that leads us right into the next section, which is kind of the fix and 7 things you can start doing this week to help your cortisol if it is chronically elevated. So number 1 would be taking a less aggressive approach with your calorie deficit. So instead of targeting a 750 or 1,000 calorie deficit per day, Most people can be around 300 to 500 calorie deficit per day. So you'll lose about a pound of body fat per week and you'll still be able to live a life, function, and not have the negative side effects. Number 2, lift 3 to 4 days a week with daily steps, not 6 high-intensity classes per week. Number 3, walk 7,000 to 10,000 steps, like kind of paired with the previous one. This doesn't have to be all at once. It can be split up throughout the day. Number 4, protein should be set to around 0.8 times your goal body weight in pounds. So if you want to weigh 150 pounds, you should eat around 120 grams of protein per day. Number 5, guard your sleep like it's your baby. So like my brother just had a baby and like they're just— they're all— they have to be always there to make sure the baby is great. That's what you should be doing with your sleep, guarding it, protecting it, making sure it's okay. So some good sleep hygienes here would be trying to wake up around the same time every day and trying to go to sleep around the same time every day, including weekends. I know it can be hard. No caffeine after noon to 1:00 PM. Get your hard training done earlier in the day if possible. A brutal 8:00 PM workout, It can keep your cortisol up at night if you don't do specific things to bring it down. And then make sure your room is cold. And especially if you're in perimenopause, it's expensive, but my Eight Sleep mattress cover, easily the best $4,000 I've ever spent in my entire life. And yes, it's expensive, but think about it. You sleep on it every single night. What else are you gonna spend your money on that could give you that much of a return on your investment? And actually, this is not an ad, by the way. I don't— I'm not affiliated with them. I just love their product. They actually have a built-in, like, menopause hot flash thing where if your body starts to— body temperature starts to increase, it would actually flip a switch and turn the mattress cold to kind of cool your body down and keep you in sleep. So again, it's, in my opinion, the best money I've ever spent in my entire life. Number 6, follow a good program. Don't do too much volume and take a real Deload week every 4 to 8 weeks. So all of our clients usually know what a deload week is, but most other people do not. A deload week is where you intentionally don't lift as heavy, don't push yourself as close to failure. You might do less sets, less reps. You do this for a week because what will happen is you'll lower your stress for that week because again, it's not a hard workout. So I'm about to do my HYROX race September 5th, and the week before the race I will take a deload week where I'll let my stress levels drop so that on Saturday I'm fully recovered and I can push as hard as I can. So taking a deload week is number 6. And then number 7, stop weighing yourself once a week. Weigh yourself every day, take the average, do the measurements, and do the photos. Do not just go by The number on the scale. Now, last things we'll touch on here before we pop off, which I hope you've enjoyed the podcast thus far, is number one, should I get my cortisol tested? And I, like I said earlier, I, I think if you, if you're gonna get your blood work done and kind of get your cortisol tested, you should get a full comprehensive panel done. It shouldn't just be cortisol, or it shouldn't just be estrogen. It should be a full comprehensive panel. Because that will actually give you the full story of not just cortisol, but cortisol and progesterone and testosterone and estrogen and your thyroid and all the things you should be looking at. So again, this is why I partnered with Merrick Health. They— if you're in the United States, you can use Merrick Health. I mean, if you are interested, again, you can click the link in the description of the podcast. We have a full setup where you can use and get a pretty sizable discount if you'd like to get some blood work done. Number 2, what about cortisol blockers and belly fat pills? My God, save your money. Like, please, I'm begging you, just save your money. Number 3, does ashwagandha work? This one will, I guess, be the most legitimate of the bunch. And so I'm going to be fair. There are a decent amount of studies where ashwagandha has modestly lowered perceived stress and cortisol levels. It's not nothing, but I think my honest take would be it's a small nudge on top of a good foundation. So it's not a replacement for all of the fixes and all the things we talked about earlier to improve. Because if you're sleeping 4 hours a night and still training 6 days a week and in a 1,200-calorie deficit, like, ashwagandha is not gonna fucking do shit for you. But if you are getting your sleep in check and You have the right calorie deficit and you're on a good strength training routine, it may be worth trying. Yeah. And so I, you know, the supplement company I use, it's called Legion Athletics. They have an ashwagandha. And if you're going to take it, I would try to pair it with magnesium, especially if you're going to use it before you go to bed. Now, again, I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice by any means. So obviously you can talk to your doctor. And with ashwagandha, it may be wise to talk to your doctor about this. Because ashwagandha is one of the supplements that could interact with other things you may be taking. So definitely check with your doctor before taking it. But, you know, if, if they say it might be right for you, Legion has one. It is ashwagandha. And again, I would take it with magnesium. So they have both of those on Legion's website. So you can head to legionathletics.com and you can actually use my code ERIC at checkout. to get buy one, get one half off. So maybe try it out. Does cortisol make you lose muscle? Chronically high cortisol is catabolic, which means it breaks down muscle tissue, but you're not gonna lose muscle from like a hard stressful week. You lose muscle from months and months of undereating, not lifting, and not sleeping. So no, as long as you're doing all the things, you're not going to lose muscle. And then last, is fasted cardio bad for cortisol? So like a 20-minute fasted walk is— it's fine. And honestly, it's great. I would say 90 minutes of intense cardio, intense fasted cardio on 4 hours of sleep in a big calorie deficit, that would be a different conversation. Yes. And so I think context matters when we're talking about, uh, is fasted cardio bad for cortisol? So So all that to say, you guys, again, most people listening to this, you would behoove yourself to improve your recovery by all the things there, which will then downstream effect improve your cortisol. And I know it's not that exciting, and I know it's not a magic pill I can sell you, but that's the truth. And I'm just here to give you the actual truth because again, we've coached over 25,000 clients. I think I've done this for A good amount of time now, and I'm just trying to give you the no BS way to go about it. So again, if you just sat here and listened to me talk for an hour and you're sitting there thinking, okay, like I, I kind of know what to do and I got some good information, but you just know you're not going to do this alone and you want help just implementing it and taking out all the guesswork. That's what my 8-week fat loss challenge is for. So it's the beginning of August. We open up a bit more spots in the beginning of August for our roster for the 8-week challenge, where again, you'll get a real plan. Custom built around your life, a one-on-one coach checking in all throughout the week, and a defined finish line so you're not just like staring down this abyss for the rest of your life. So there'll be a link in the show notes of the podcast if you'd like to learn more and apply. And if it's a good fit, you'll hop on a call with me personally. We'll chat a bit more and see if we can help you out. So again, link in bio or link in description, or just Google Eric Roberts Fitness 8-Week Challenge. And so, uh, again, If you take nothing else from this episode, please just know your body's not working against you. It's actually protecting you. You just have to give it what it needs and it will give back to you what you want. So I love you guys and, uh, we will chat next time. All right.