Small, realistic ways to help your body recover from a busy life

Cortisol has become one of those health words that seems to be everywhere.

We’re told our cortisol is too high, that we need to “balance” it, lower it, test it – preferably while drinking something green, taking several supplements and fitting in a cold plunge before breakfast.

But cortisol itself isn’t the enemy.

It’s an essential hormone. It helps us wake up in the morning, mobilise energy when we need it and respond to the demands of everyday life. Cortisol naturally rises and falls throughout the day, and we certainly don’t want to get rid of it.

And can you actually “reset” your cortisol? Not quite – despite what Instagram might have you believe.

What we can do is support a healthier stress response by giving our bodies regular opportunities to move out of constant high-alert mode and recover.

And this is particularly relevant for women.

Work. Children. Ageing parents. Relationships. Exercise. Shopping. Cooking. Appointments. WhatsApp groups. Remembering that somebody needs a birthday present by Friday.

Even the things we enjoy can add to the overall load.

The answer isn’t to eliminate stress – good luck with that – but to build small periods of genuine recovery into our days.

And fortunately, that doesn’t require a weekend at a spa.

1. Go outside for ten minutes – without your phone

Not to get your steps in. Not while listening to a podcast. Not while returning a call.

Simply go outside.

Daylight is one of the important signals that helps regulate our circadian rhythm – our internal 24-hour clock – and cortisol itself follows a strong daily rhythm.

Try sitting outside with your morning coffee or walking around the block before starting work.

And occasionally leave the headphones at home.

Ten minutes when nobody can reach you can be surprisingly restorative.

2. Stop filling every available space

This may be the one many busy women find hardest.

You see two free hours in the diary and think: Perfect. I can fit that in.

Perhaps you can.

But should you?

If fitting something in means rushing across town, eating lunch at your desk or arriving home already exhausted, that apparently “free” space wasn’t really free.

Try leaving some white space in your diary.

You don’t have to optimise every hour of your life.

3. Take a walk that achieves absolutely nothing

Walking is wonderful exercise, but occasionally let it be something else.

No step target. No audiobook. No phone call. No attempt to learn French while walking the dog.

Just walk.

Even five or ten minutes without additional input creates a little space away from the constant stream of information most of us consume throughout the day.

4. Put rest in the diary

We tend to treat rest as the reward we earn once everything else has been done.

There is just one problem with this system:

Everything is never done.

So treat recovery as you would any other appointment.

Start with ten minutes if necessary. Eventually, try protecting a couple of hours somewhere in your week with no particular purpose attached to them.

Not laundry. Not life admin. Not “catching up”.

Rest.

5. Find your version of a jigsaw puzzle

It doesn’t have to be a jigsaw.

It might be knitting, gardening, drawing, cooking something slowly, doing a crossword, painting or arranging flowers.

The important part is that it absorbs your attention without demanding very much from you.

We spend so much time consuming information that doing something quietly with our hands can feel wonderfully different.

6. Read fiction

Not a nutrition book.

Not something about productivity.

And definitely not an article entitled Seven Things Successful Women Do Before 6am.

A novel.

Ten or fifteen minutes of reading gives your brain somewhere else to go for a while. And unlike scrolling through your phone, it doesn’t present you with another 37 things you ought to know, buy or worry about.

As somebody who loves reading, this is one health recommendation I am very happy to prescribe.

7. Think about that afternoon coffee

Coffee isn’t inherently bad for you, and I’m certainly not suggesting everyone needs to give it up.

But caffeine is a stimulant and can affect both the stress response and sleep. If you are already feeling tired but wired, reaching automatically for another coffee at 4pm may not be doing you any favours.

Try noticing when you’re drinking coffee because you genuinely enjoy it and when you’re using it to push an exhausted body through the rest of the day.

Sometimes what you need isn’t another espresso.

It’s ten minutes off.

8. Create a tiny evening ritual

Your body appreciates cues.

Dim the lights. Make tea. Put your phone away. Read a few pages of your book. Take a warm shower.

It doesn’t need to become a complicated 12-step “perfect sleep routine”.

The aim is simply to create a transition between daytime doing and night-time resting.

If you’re answering emails in bed and then expecting your brain to switch off instantly, it may have other ideas.

9. Put your feet up – literally

Try lying down for ten or fifteen minutes with your feet elevated.

Close your eyes.

You don’t have to sleep or meditate or achieve anything.

This can be particularly lovely in that slightly frazzled late-afternoon period when you’re tempted to reach automatically for coffee, chocolate or your phone.

There doesn’t need to be a complicated physiological explanation for everything we do for our health.

Sometimes resting simply feels good.

10. Try one minute of slow breathing

Breathing techniques don’t need to involve candles and twenty minutes of meditation.

Try this:

Breathe in slowly for four counts.
Pause briefly.
Breathe out slowly for four counts.
Pause briefly.

Repeat three to five times.

Slow, controlled breathing can influence the autonomic nervous system and help reduce feelings of arousal and stress.

You can do it on the Métro, before a meeting, after a difficult conversation or while waiting outside school.

Nobody even needs to know.

11. Exercise – but don’t turn that into another source of stress

Regular movement is one of the best things we can do for our physical and mental health.

Walking, Pilates, strength training, cycling, swimming — choose something you can do consistently and preferably enjoy.

But more isn’t automatically better.

Exercise itself is a physical stressor and can temporarily increase cortisol. That’s completely normal. The important question is whether your overall exercise routine leaves you feeling stronger and more energised or permanently exhausted and sore.

If you’re sleeping badly, under-eating, working long hours and squeezing punishing workouts into an already overloaded week, adding more exercise may not be the answer.

Sometimes the sensible choice is the walk.

12. Do one thing at a time

This sounds almost absurdly simple.

Yet how often are you eating while reading emails, watching television while scrolling Instagram or having a conversation while mentally writing tomorrow’s to-do list?

Multitasking keeps the brain continually switching between demands.

Try creating small periods when you do one thing only.

Twenty focused minutes of work.

Lunch without your laptop.

Coffee without your phone.

A walk without a podcast.

We don’t necessarily need less to do. Sometimes we need less happening at the same time.

The point isn’t to become perfectly calm

Stress is part of life.

Some of it is unavoidable and some of it comes from the very things we love: interesting work, children, relationships, travel and having a full life.

The goal isn’t to spend your days in a state of Zen-like serenity.

It’s to make sure there are moments when your body gets the message:

Nothing is required of you right now.

And perhaps that’s the most useful thing to remember.

You don’t need to adopt all twelve of these ideas. Choose one or two that appeal to you and practise them regularly.

Health rarely comes from doing everything perfectly.

More often, it comes from understanding what your body needs — and doing enough of it, consistently, to make a difference.

Feeling tired, wired, overwhelmed – or simply not quite yourself?

Why does all this matter?

When our stress response is repeatedly activated and we don’t get enough opportunity to recover, it can affect much more than how stressed we feel. Cortisol interacts with many of the systems involved in energy, metabolism, sleep and hormonal health.

Over time, chronic stress can contribute to symptoms such as fatigue, poor sleep, difficulty concentrating or brain fog, low mood and changes in appetite or weight. Around perimenopause and menopause, stress and poor sleep can also make symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats feel harder to manage.

But – and this is important – experiencing these symptoms doesn’t automatically mean you have “high cortisol”.

Stress may be part of the picture, but it isn’t always the whole picture.

Sleep, nutrition, blood-sugar regulation, hormonal changes, movement, gut health and the demands of your particular life can all influence how you feel. Often several things are happening at once.

And this is where I think we need to be a little wary of the current obsession with cortisol. If you’re exhausted, gaining weight, sleeping badly or feeling unlike yourself, you probably don’t need another Instagram diagnosis or a supplement promising to “fix your cortisol”.

What you may need is someone to help you look at the bigger picture.

If you’ve been trying to do all the “right” things and still don’t feel as well as you think you should, this is exactly the sort of puzzle I help my clients unravel.

You can book a complimentary 30-minute Health Transformation Call to talk through what’s going on and where it might make sense to start.