C: Episode 4!!! We’re so amazingly psyched to finally give you the action plan for managing the stress - weight connection. I’m Cheryl Gordon. I help educate midlife women about sleeping better, feeling stronger and losing weight using the tools of yoga and mindfulness.

S: And I’m Sharlene Styles, certified holistic nutritionist, life coach and metabolism mechanic. You want to lose that menopause middle or belly? The stuff that just appears out of nowhere it seems!

C: I know! And I was still exercising, eating healthy, etc. Where did all that flesh come from???

S: Today we’ll look at the role of cortisol and why that causes weight gain. So many of my clients are busy, accomplished women who have juggled stressful schedules and lives for decades. Why do they suddenly gain weight from stress? It seems like nothing new after all.

C: I might have a clue. (show graphic) When we’re at home base, we are feeling safe, calm and centred. Below home base, we’re feeling a lack of energy. Above home base, we’re feeling jazzed, maybe a bit scattered, even overwhelmed. We’re at our best when we’re at home base. Our brain is firing on all cylinders but we’re also maximizing efficiency in our systems. Pushing our systems to the orange zone is inefficient, exhausting and depleting our bodies of essential infrastructure repair resources.

Picture a war zone. That’s a place that has been in crisis mode and it’s a blown up wreck of rubble. After decades of running crazy, never resting enough, pushing ourselves to the limit, our systems are a blown up wreck in a lot of ways. Not enough energy to digest well or do cellular repair.

In our 30’s, we could get away with it. But the consistent deficit of restoring the systems adds up.

S: And the hormone that circulates during prolonged periods in that orange zone is cortisol. When cortisol stays high for too long—whether from stress, over-exercising, or lack of sleep—it signals your body to store fat, especially around the belly. That’s because your body thinks it needs to conserve energy for a crisis, even if that “crisis” is just daily stress. Plus, cortisol triggers the breakdown of glycogen into glucose, flooding your system with extra fuel to escape the perceived threat—except there’s nothing to actually run from. And as we covered in the hormone episode, that spike in glucose triggers an insulin response, and insulin’s job is to store fat—especially in the belly.

C: Last session, I mentioned yoga and mindfulness “snacks”.

S: Yeah, I love that term! Rather than using food as snacks, we nourish our nervous system instead.

C: It’s just not that easy for the average busy woman to take an hour for a yoga practice then meditate twice a day and glide around chanting peace, love and joy. It is a great way to live for sure, but not practical for most.

Yoga and mindfulness “snacks” are mini-retreats that you weave into your day.

S: Like the 3 minute breathing space?

C: Yes! Or a quick series of stretches or a short “loving kindness” meditation

S: And how often would you recommend people “snack” on yoga each day?

C: I think it’s realistic to build in 3 snacks a day. Overall, this is only 15 minutes or less. You could squeeze that out couldn’t you Sharlene, as busy as you are?

S: It’s just a matter of understanding the benefit and making that commitment to myself and making it a daily habit. And I may even venture to say to feel it’s benefits?

C: You know it. How could just 3 - 5 minutes on a reset make any real impact? It’s got to do with resilience. I know how it feels to get stuck in the orange zone of stress. (Show graphic again) It’s addicting to feel that rush of adrenalin. Coming down out of the orange zone to the gray zone feels dull and depressing. God forbid I feel anything unpleasant! So I push back up to jazzy. There’s no real chance to get familiar with that green zone.

The little “snacks” re-educate the nervous system to find that green zone. And you develop the ability to land in the green zone on demand, even if outside circumstances are still super crazy.

S: I always feel more relaxed and grounded after yoga.

C: The reason mindful movement is so powerful has to do with how stress is held in the tissues.

Every event that has ever happened to you… someone smiled at you yesterday or, conversely, you almost got hit in traffic… this creates a neurochemical reaction in the body. The brain, almost instantaneously, evaluates this circumstance, searches through its lifelong database of possible meanings and then issues commands for a hormonal cascade that historically has helped you manage similar circumstances. To facilitate the effectiveness of this mechanism, the tissues in the body ALSO store records of these neurochemical signatures and stand super ready to send signals up to the brain as to how to react. It’s bi-directional information flowing constantly in your nervous system (and probably through your connective tissue).

That’s why the slow, rhythmic movement of yoga, timed with deep nostril breathing, literally cleanses these neurochemical habits. Yoga really is unique in that it combines movement with no competitive aspect to fire up the nervous system. So you get the physical benefits of exercise plus the guidance back to the green zone.

I really want to do a deeper dive on somatics and releasing stress in our four part course, Sharlene.

S: Yes, I’m so excited about that. We’ll be releasing several deeper dive courses over the next few months so be sure to sign up for our newsletters to get priority access. You can find sign up forms and more resources on either of our websites, www.purenaturalhealth.ca or www.cherylgordonyt.com Please subscribe to this youtube channel or comment. Let us know how your empress journey is unfolding and whether these topics affect you too.

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