# Episode 205: Stress Series Part 1: Why Stress Hits Harder in Menopause?

An episode of [Becoming MindStrong](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1505918838), 28 Sep 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/977851/episodes/19876359-episode-205-stress-series-part-1-why-stress-hits-harder-in-menopause.mp3

We’re kicking off Stress Week with the WHY behind stress in menopause. I will explain what happens to estrogen and cortisol as we age, why chronic stress can affect everything from sleep to visceral fat, and why there’s nothing “wrong” with you when your body starts responding differently. Check out my (free) workshop, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond right here: www.MindStrongFitness.com

## Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Episode 205: Stress Series Part 1: Why Stress Hits Harder in Menopause?
Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome back to the Becoming Mind Strong podcast. My name is Rachel. I'm the founder and CEO of Mind Strong, where for the past almost decade now we have been helping peri and postmenopausal women not just lose the weight, not just get their energy and their sleep back, but most importantly, as an educator, understand the how and why, so they have what I love to call the new tool bag for the rest of their life. If you have hung out here before, you know that your girl loves a three-part series. I think that it's a great way to really dig deep and completely understand a subject inside and out. So today we are kicking off part one of three of Stress Week. Cortisol is such a buzzword in this world of menopause, and a lot of us don't know what's actually going on in our body when it comes to cortisol. We're going to talk about why stress hits harder in a menopausal body. From there, we'll go on to what cortisol actually does and why is that important. And then finally, the light at the end of the tunnel. How can I get my stress level, my cortisol in check, especially in this body over 40? For part one today, we are going to start with the why. Why does stress hit so much harder in menopause? Right. So many of us have experienced this. Things that used to feel like a two or three water off a duck's back-not that big a deal. All of a sudden, they feel like an eight or nine. If your social media feed looks like mine, there's some hilarious memes about people just losing it over things that that never really would have bothered them before. And I think, especially as women, we love to shame, blame, guilt ourselves. Right? What is wrong with me? Where did my patience go? Why do I feel like I'm I'm on the brink all the time? And when we can understand this is a biological shift, we can not only start to release some of that shame, blame, guilt, we can also start to take the steps to get things back under control, which is what we're going to talk about in part three, so
Speaker 1 4:00
We need that cortisol response to kick in in an actual threat, because what that cortisol cortisol response is doing, it's physically activating our body to respond to the threat. So biologically, what's happening in that moment is two things. Number one, our body is producing a surge of energy, so that if we need to fight the saber-tooth tiger, we have more glucose readily available, and we have the energy we need to respond to the situation. Number two, our body is shutting down anything that's not a priority in that moment. Again, in the name of having energy to survive. That is vitally important. Real quickly before we keep going in this episode, we are talking a lot about metabolisms in menopause in today's episode. So I want to offer you a chance to deepen your knowledge. If you haven't yet checked out my free workshop, how to fire up your. In menopause and beyond, it is one of my go-to favorite pieces of content that I have out here in the interwebs. You can use the link in the show notes below, or go to mindstrongfitness.com and you'll get a cute little pop-up that'll get you straight into the workshop. Now, let's get back to the show. That is vitally important, right? If I am face to face with a saber-tooth tiger. I do not care how well my body is digesting food in that moment. I do not care if my muscles are recovering and recuperating. What I care about is can I survive this actual moment? And we would not be here if our body did not produce a cortisol response in moments of threat. So I say all that to say, cortisol is not the issue. Cortisol is not a bad thing; it is a capital M must for survival. The problem is, our brains, our bodies cannot tell the difference between perceived threat and actual threat, said in human terms, our bodies and our brains cannot tell the difference between a saber-tooth tiger and an email from our boss. So when it's responding the same threat response to saber-toothed tigers and emails, what happens is we start to live in a
Speaker 1 8:27
So when we talk about the importance of getting cortisol under control, which we will in part three, this is why the cortisol control is not some optional feel-good rainbows and glitter and unicorns type of thing. If we want to lessen visceral fat, which I hope we do, because it is not a vanity measure, visceral fat is metabolically active. It can cause serious health issues. If we want to get rid of visceral fat, cortisol, lowering those levels, getting it under control, is a non-negotiable. You will not get visceral fat under control. That lower belly fat, that meno belly, without doing some deep work around this topic of cortisol, and finally the other big one that we see time and time again is what you'll hear called wired but tired. Right? It's like Rachel, I am so exhausted. I put my head on the pillow, and suddenly I'm remembering that embarrassing thing I said back in 2003. That is tired but wired. We we physically need to go to sleep, but it's like we cannot turn our brain off. That is often a sign of chronic high stress. Now, here's one of the most important things I can say for this first part. In part two, when we dig deeper into what cortisol does and why it's so important. What you're gonna see is that this is not just emotional. And I referenced this earlier, but I'm gonna bring it back right now. Sometimes when people hear things like cortisol control, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That that's like a light and fluffy extra. I need to focus on workouts. I need to focus on nutrition and whatever. That's just something people say to feel good." That is not true. It is true that nutrition is number one. Workouts are incredibly important, and going to bring you back to what you heard me say a little bit earlier. You will not lose visceral fat in a body over 40 if we are not addressing cortisol. And as you will see in part three, when we get into the how-how to get my cortisol under control? Get things back in balance. This is not just emotional. Your
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