It’s Cortisol Awareness Month - Let’s Talk Cortisol Belly.

In women, high cortisol can often show up as stubborn belly fat, low energy, poor sleep, or feeling constantly wired but tired.

For those who have you been eating well, moving daily, but noticing your belly is just not going down. This might be the missing link. Cortisol, your body’s main stress hormone, could be sabotaging your efforts.

"Cortisol belly" might sound like a fad, but it’s not. It’s a term used to describe stubborn weight gain around the middle that’s linked to high cortisol levels.

Now, cortisol is essential for life. We need it to wake up in the morning, respond to danger, and power through the day. But when cortisol stays high for too long due to constant stress, poor sleep, intense exercise, blood sugar crashes, or skipping meals, it starts to cause problems.

One of those problems is fat storage around your belly. Why there? The abdominal area has more receptors for cortisol, so your body stores fat there as a survival mechanism.

When stress becomes chronic, your body thinks you're always in danger. So it does a few clever (but frustrating) things:

• Stores fat around your belly for quick energy

• Raises blood sugar to fuel you up

• Increases cravings for sugar and carbs

• Slows digestion and muscle building to conserve energy

This isn’t about what you’re doing wrong—it’s about what your body is trying to protect you from. Your body is doing its job, trying to keep you safe in a world that’s moving too fast.

Why You Might Have Cortisol Belly:

As we said before, cortisol is crucial for life, but we need to keep it under control. Here are a few of the common reasons it gets out of sync:

• Chronic Stress: From work demands to family life, stress is everywhere. Your body can’t always tell the difference between a real emergency and a busy calendar.
• Poor Sleep: Your circadian rhythm keeps cortisol and melatonin in check. Ideally, melatonin rises in the evening to help us fall asleep, while cortisol gently rises in the morning to wake us up. However, if we’re up late on screens, drinking caffeine in the afternoon, or eating dinner too close to bedtime, we confuse the rhythm—keeping us wired at night and flatlined by morning.
• Blood Sugar Imbalance: Skipping meals or eating too little sends a signal of stress, spiking cortisol. Say hello to cravings, fatigue, and that up and down energy.
• Overexercising: This might be surprising, but intense exercise can actually raise cortisol. This is because your body sees it as a physical stressor. If your body is already under stress, it sees this added demand as too much, triggering even more cortisol release.
• Caffeine: Coffee on an empty stomach might feel like fuel, but it can flood your system with cortisol and adrenaline, leaving you wired, anxious or burnt out. This is because it stimulates your nervous system and sends your body into high alert mode.

What to Eat for Cortisol Balance

Before we go into what to eat to support cortisol, just take a breath. You don’t need to change everything overnight. Sometimes small, intentional shifts can make the biggest difference. Let’s take a look at how you can gently nourish your body to help it come back into balance.

Let’s shift the focus to nourishment, not restriction. Here’s what can help:

Eat more of:

• Protein: ideally 30g+ with every meal (consuming minimum 100g+ daily), especially breakfast to stabilise morning cortisol. It also supports recovery after exercise, helps build lean muscle, and is essential for anyone looking to lose fat in a sustainable way.
• Magnesium rich foods: like spinach, pumpkin seeds, bananas and dark chocolate. Magnesium supports the nervous system, reduces stress, helps regulate melatonin, and plays a key role in maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm.
• Healthy fats: Not only do healthy fats help to keep blood sugar stable, they also help to reduce inflammation, and nourish the nervous system. This includes olive oil, wild caught oily fish, nuts, seeds, avocado and olives, as well as our Pure and Wild Omega 3.
• Complex carbs: Like sweet potato, oats, quinoa, apples, pears, and wholegrains. Don’t be afraid of carbs! They’re essential for energy, especially when you’re healing from stress. The key is choosing the right kind, slow releasing, fibre rich carbs that give your body the fuel it needs.

Ease off on:

• Skipping meals: It disrupts blood sugar and ramps up cortisol. If fasting, just make sure your first meal is rich in protein. Upon wakening, try a warm glass of lemon water with a pinch of Celtic sea salt to help replenish minerals and support adrenals.
• Ultra processed foods: We know this goes without saying, but life is also for living. That piece of cake with a friend or a meal out is part of a joyful, balanced life—and we encourage that. What we’re talking about here is the day-in, day-out choice of foods that spike your blood sugar, increase inflammation, and offer very little real nourishment.
• Caffeine: Caffeine, especially on an empty stomach, can lead to a sudden rush of anxiety, digestive issues (yes, those urgent trips to the loo), or feeling jittery and wired. Try delaying your coffee until mid-morning and always after food, and add a spoon of MCT oil and/or collagen to help stabilise blood sugar and give you a gentler, more focused energy boost.

Move Smarter, Not Harder

We’ve been told for years that more is better. But when cortisol is involved, it might be time to change that mindset. More intensity doesn’t always mean better results. Gentle, intentional movement can actually be more effective when your body is stressed. Here’s what we recommend:

• Pilates: Pilates is a beautiful way to strengthen the body while calming the nervous system. It focuses on breath, control, alignment, and core stability—making it an ideal form of exercise when you need to move but don’t want to push your body into overdrive. Our founder, Kate, uses the Pilates by Bryony app, so she can do pilates any time of the day and wherever in the world she is!
• Strength training: Strength training helps build lean muscle, supports metabolic health, and improves insulin sensitivity—without spiking cortisol like long cardio sessions can. When done right, it strengthens your body and your stress resilience.
• Walking (especially after meals): Walking is one of the most underrated forms of movement. A 10-20 minute stroll after meals can help stabilise blood sugar, aid digestion, and lower cortisol.

Interesting Study: One study found that intense physical activity was associated with reduced ovulation. When cortisol stays high, it signals to your body that it’s not a safe time to reproduce, and hormone balance can suffer.

Reset Your Nervous System:

Let’s be honest, life is a lot. And even if you're eating the right foods and moving your body well, if your mind is always in overdrive, your nervous system never truly gets a break. Just a few moments a day can make a huge difference to how grounded and calm you feel.

Here are 3 small daily wins that can calm your nervous system:

• Legs up the wall for 5 mins to encourage blood flow and relax the body. 
• Box breathing: inhale 4 counts, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4.
• Morning sunlight: This is so important for supporting your circadian rhythm. Getting outside and into natural light within 10 minutes of waking helps reduce melatonin and support that natural cortisol lift.
• One mindful moment a day: Sit outside with tea, journal, read a chapter of a book, or simply breathe. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just something that brings you back to yourself.

Cortisol Balance bundle: The Supplements That Really Help

We know, it can feel like a minefield out there where supplements are concerned. That’s why we created our Cortisol Balance bundle—to take the guesswork out and make things easy, effective, and stress free (which is exactly what we’re aiming for, right?).

What’s Inside:

• Magnesium: for nervous system support, hormone balance, and sleep. It’s like a deep breath for your body.
• Omega-3: helps reduce inflammation and supports both brain and hormone health. Essential for calming the fire within

• Bio-Shoden Ashwagandha: Our beloved adaptogen. It works directly on cortisol, supporting the adrenal glands and helping your body handle stress in a smoother, more balanced way. Plus, our Bio-Shoden Ashwagandha has more clinical data than any other ashwagandha supplement globally!

Berberine: A great addition for ‘cortisol belly’ in particular, as it’s incredible for supporting blood sugar balance and insulin sensitivity, two major factors in the cortisol puzzle. It activates AMPK, an enzyme involved in metabolism and fat burning, and has been shown to be especially helpful when it comes to shifting weight around the middle.

The Art of Balance:

We hope this blog helps you understand cortisol a little better—how it works, why it may be elevated, and what you can do to gently bring it back into balance.

This isn’t about restrictive diets, pushing yourself harder, or overhauling your life. It’s quite the opposite in fact, more about slowing down, tuning in, and giving your body the support it needs.

Your body isn’t fighting you. It’s communicating with you. And once you learn how to listen, that’s when the healing begins.

If you’d like more personalised support, check out our 1:1 packages with our founder Kate, who will guide you step by step to balance your hormones, improve your energy, and understand your body like never before.

Cortisol is essential for life, but balance is the goal. And that balance is totally possible.