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Don’t F*kn Shrink: Sustainable Performance for High-Achieving Women
Success shouldn't cost you your health.
For years, women have been taught to push through stress. But what if that's exactly what's holding you back?
Don't F*kn Shrink is the podcast for high-achieving women who want to perform at their best without sacrificing their health, relationships, or identity. Hosted by performance physiologist Daffney Allwein, each episode explores the science behind sustainable performance; from nervous system regulation and stress recovery to strength, longevity, leadership, and the psychology of ambition.
Whether you're leading a company, raising a family, building a career, or navigating midlife, you'll learn how to work with your body instead of against it so you can show up with more energy, confidence, and clarity
Because success isn't about shrinking yourself to fit your life. It's about building a life where you never have to.
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Don’t F*kn Shrink: Sustainable Performance for High-Achieving Women
52: Tired, Wired, and Gaining Weight? Let’s Talk About Cortisol
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Cortisol is getting blamed for everything; from stubborn weight gain and sleepless nights to anxiety, exhaustion, and burnout. But is cortisol actually the problem, or is the internet selling you another quick fix? Adrian Thompson breaks down what high and low cortisol really look like, why “adrenal fatigue” isn’t as straightforward as social media makes it sound, and when your symptoms deserve a closer look. If you’re tired, wired, overwhelmed, or convinced you need a cortisol detox, listen to this before buying another supplement.
Connect with Denise Tallcott:
instagram.com/vida_womenshealth
In This Episode:
- (01:20) What cortisol is and why your body needs it
- (03:20) Signs of high vs low cortisol
- (06:40) How cortisol should fluctuate throughout the day
- (10:15) Why cortisol testing isn’t always reliable
- (15:15) The truth about adrenal fatigue, supplements, and lifestyle changes
Connect with Daffney:
Your body is talking. This Free 2-Minute Quiz can help you pinpoint what’s draining your energy, impacting your health, and keeping you stuck.
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We all look into the chasm of the stress and everything we have to endure with burnout during the day. And the punch word we are hearing every single day is cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. And luckily, with me today is a returning guest who has all the answers. Thank God she's here. This is Adrien Thompson. We are going to dig into how cortisol is affecting you, what we're looking for, and what the heck is it? Welcome to Don't Fing Shrink, the podcast, where we stop playing small and start showing up big. I'm your host, Daphne Allwine, and I'm here to cut through the noise, ditch the self-doubt, and get honest about what it takes to live and lead with unapologetic confidence. Each week you'll hear unfiltered conversations, powerful stories, and in real life strategies to help you take up space in your life, your work, and your world. So buckle up because shrinking is not an option here. Let's dive in. If I had a nickel for every time a client said, I saw this on Instagram, I saw this on TikTok, I saw this on some social media platform, is my cortisol too high? Uh-huh. I have to giggle. I have to think, wow, what are they selling you? Yes. Can you dig in and even just explain to us what cortisol is and what we're looking at? So cortisol is actually a hormone.
SPEAKER_01It is a steroid hormone or a glucocorticoid. It is released by our adrenal glands, which is a tiny little gland that sits on top of our kidneys. And it talks to the brain and it talks to our pituitary gland and our all these things in our brain. So it is a very normal hormone that we have. We want cortisol. Cortisol is necessary for our daily routine, for getting up in the morning, going down at night to be able to fall asleep. So it's a very normal part of our daily life, and we need it. When we have high cortisol levels to the point where it starts creating true dysfunction in our body, when it's elevated, it's called Cushing syndrome. And Cushing syndrome, you know, you can see a lot of that weight gain. There's some skin changes, metabolic changes, but true hypercortisol is a cushing's disease. And then if we have true low cortisol level or deficiency in cortisol, it's called Addison's disease. And that's the condition where you're going to see a lot of just exhaustion, fatigue. You're going to see GI upset. But it's truly life-affecting and keeps you from doing your normal everyday activities.
SPEAKER_00I think we actually get sort of confused with all the publicity that cortisol is getting. We always like to have a villain, right? Oh, cortisol.
SPEAKER_01Well, people talk about adrenal fatigue, right? So they're defining that as a fatigue and exhaustion, and people, you know, misassociate with some type of dysfunction when it might just be due to other things and true adrenal insufficiency is a medical condition called Addison's disease.
SPEAKER_00So what does high cortisol look like symptomatically? What like someone comes to you and you notice that they have high cortisol? What do you even notice physiology-wise or mentally with them before they even sort of reach that diagnosis? So one of the main concerns is weight gain. What's the cause considering the hormone effect? Is it suppressing a metabolic response?
SPEAKER_01Is it multifactorial for why it causes this? If our cortisol isn't working correctly, our metabolism can't work correctly. We're not processing our insulin as correctly as we used to. And so we get other things as a result of that too. So yeah, we get the weight change, but we get a lot of swelling in our face. There's the kind of hump on our back. We retain a lot of water, so we're very swollen. Sometimes we can bruise too easily or stretch marks. But it affects the way that we use our insulin. Ah, okay. It affects the way that we use our blood. It leads to high blood pressure. It can make us feel anxious, very anxious all the time because it is a higher steroid, so it might worsen your anxiety.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Blood sugars are staying a little bit higher, so we're not being able to break our sugars down. So we're hungrier, we're tired, and just kind of craving more carbohydrates. So it's just kind of a perfect storm for metabolism issues, and one of those being weight gain.
SPEAKER_00So transversely, if I had low cortisol function or quantity, what what would that look like?
SPEAKER_01So we talk about, you know, of course, fatigue and being tired all the time, but also like muscle weaknesses. You know, you go to pick up something and you just don't feel as strong as you do. Or maybe you are exercising and you're not able to do what you used to do. And then weight loss. So unintentional. So why have I just lost five pounds? I wasn't trying to do that. Why have I lost 10 pounds? Maybe you're not hungry anymore, like stomach upset type like nausea, sometimes some vomiting, bloating, sometimes lower, lower blood sugar levels.
SPEAKER_00In the hypoglycemic sort of range, or that might be a misnomer, right? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And when we have this low blood sugar hypoglycemic, our body pulls from our fat for energy. So that's why we lose weight. We don't have the sugars in our blood to break down for energy. So we pull from our fats to get our energy. That's why we're losing weight.
SPEAKER_00I think what most of my clients are noticing is their cortisol during the day. So you and I talked about this a little bit. Like, what is the anticipated, like expected outcome? Is cortisol exposed to be high in the morning, supposed to be low for women? It's a rhythm, right?
SPEAKER_01Like throughout the day, our cortisol is constantly fluctuating, going up, going down. But it does follow that circadian pattern. You know, cortisol, it's a steroid, so it does help wake us up and get us going in the morning. So our relatively highest amount of cortisol is going to be in the morning. And then, of course, throughout the day, it's slowly declined so that we can go to bed at night. That's the problem, though, even though it's not always just a slow decline because we have different things that happen during our day. Yes. You know, some stressful event happens, we go exercise. Exercise is a fantastic way to burn energy, feel better, get that dopamine, and it elevates our cortisol levels.
SPEAKER_00See, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And after we work out, we rest and it comes right back down. So I'm not the villain. Oh, but maybe I shouldn't exercise because it raises my cortisol levels. I'm like, no, that's the kind of cortisol level boost you need, because you need it to be able to exercise, use your muscles, build your muscles. But then when you're done, you have that relaxation and the cortisol goes down to normal. So it's not an issue making your chronic cortisol, high cortisol levels worse, if that's the thing you're thinking.
SPEAKER_00If I am somebody who generally has a higher cortisol in the evening, right? And I actually notice this a lot with my clients who travel a lot and maybe their circadian rhythm is affected by that. So they're they're in, you know, one boardroom, they're on another coast the next day. One of the symptoms, and and help me with this, is they can't get to sleep at night because that's when the anxiety is setting in. That's when their body starts to feel. And then it's really hard for them to do the morning thing. And this is why we're pounding cups of coffee to get into the day, or, you know, making sure that our exercise in the morning is that symptomatic of something specific? Or how do you how do you read that as a practitioner?
SPEAKER_01So we have to then look back on what is it that's causing you to have elevated cortisol levels in the evening, right? Yeah. That's not normal. We shouldn't have that. So what is it? Is it your sleep in general? Is it jet lag?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01These are all fascinating. We have this chronic issue with sleep. Our sleep is disrupted. Maybe you're having some hot flashes or night sweats, or you're traveling, or you've got a kid in your bed, or your husband snores, or you know, whatever, but you're getting this disrupted sleep. And then we're tired during the day. We're less likely to exercise. And if we do, our recovery is not going to be as great. Maybe our mood, we're a little bit more irritable, we're not tolerating our stress as well. A lot of times when we're tired, our hunger hormones go up, our satiation hormones go down, we're not making as good, you know, food choices. Yeah. And this cascade of things is what we perceive as stress or high cortisol levels. And so looking back and finding those things and trying to fix those would help with that circadian rhythm of, you know, your cortisol and being able to fall asleep at night.
SPEAKER_00Love it. You and I talk about hormones. I know you're really good in what one of the one of your specialties is actually testing hormones for people. And we we know your hormones are different every hour, different every minute, that sort of thing. Is there something you're using right now that's sort of pinpointing the cortisol for clients?
SPEAKER_01It's so hard to get a blood test or a swab for cortisol. And even the ones we have aren't great. And when you get that result, you have to interpret it based on so many other factors that were happening around that time that's. What did you eat? Yeah, exactly. If you go get it drawn in the morning and you didn't sleep, it's gonna be off. If that morning before you go get your blood drawn, you almost have an accident, it could be super high. It's really, really hard. If we truly suspect high or low, it's gonna show up on your labs if it's Cushings or Addison's disease and thresholds are pretty dynamic, very specific, right? Those are obvious. There's other tests we can do too, but it's hard to interpret correctly a cortisol blood tester swab. Again, like our estrogen and progesterone, when we're in therimopause, it can be a roller coaster all day long.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What are some of the ways that cortisol is being treated?
SPEAKER_01So for me, if we know it's not one of those conditions, going back to the basics. How is your sleep? How is your nutrition? Are you getting some exercise? Are you taking time for yourself? A lot of times in midlife, we're the parent. Maybe we're taking care of parents. Sandwich generation. Yeah. We're working full-time, we're trying to do all the things and be all the things, and a wife and you know, all these things. Yeah. And so we forget to give ourselves a break. And during those breaks, rest and relaxation, yeah, that's when our cortisol comes down. So really putting into your day at least 10 to 15 minutes, maybe in the morning, maybe 10 to 15 minutes in the evening, maybe it's just stretching, maybe it's reading a book, listening to a book, taking a walk, calling your best friend, what have you. But we have to think about what activities can I do during the day that will give my adrenals a chance to rest.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. If I suspected that my issue was a clinical thing. So Addison's or Cushans, what's being prescribed at this point for somebody with a condition like that? Oh, I'm you gotta go see your endocrinologist. Is it is there a pharmaceutical sort of like aspect to this? Yeah. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. For those, these conditions are quite severe and can be very chronic and debilitating.
SPEAKER_00Are they common? Like in your opinion? Or be no. Okay. See, that that's the big discussion is like everyone assume, and this is thank you, internet, right? Everyone assumes they've already contact, you know, contracted a disease as soon as they start hearing, you know, their their social media posts. But like the truth is, and this is sort of why you and I are having this conversation today, is this we are all in that centerpiece. Whether we like it or not, we're all in the center somewhere. And the lifestyle that we're choosing, the choices we're making for our health prophylactically, right, are really determining like where we are in that field. So we have some power in this, which is I why I love having this conversation with you, is I think people have a tendency, you know, a lot of times, a lot of times when I meet a new client, they're like, quick pill, quick solution, that sort of thing. Give me a separate wrong shot. But the but the truth is there is, there are alternatives if you have made one of these two thresholds. So make sure that that is if you have questions, if the internet has piqued your curiosity that far, that go ahead and get that blood test because it will be exact if you fall in one of those two extreme camps. Yeah, those, those extreme.
SPEAKER_01And there's other tests that we can run if we truly think that it is too high or too low. And this is not just a chronic stress or, you know, midlife things that we're going through. That's a whole other ballpark. The workup for these conditions are way greater than a blood test.
SPEAKER_00All right. So we've done the extremes now. Now we're going to talk about the realistic side of cortisol. But I love that you tapped into adrenal fatigue because that is something that I feel is getting diagnosed more often with people I'm seeing. Can you tell me what that is or what that looks like?
SPEAKER_01So I think adrenal fatigue is when we consider ourselves in a fight or flight state for too long. We can all relate to that. Yes, go ahead. And we've just got this exhaustion doing all the things, and it just seems difficult no matter what we do, as far as energy. And so one of the things we look to are what are our adrenals doing? Like I said, there's many steroids that come out of the adrenals. And so the thought would be we just kind of burned out our adrenals because we had so much chronic stress for so long.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So it's not working anymore. Right. Okay. I see what you mean. That's the theory. But I mean, it's not a diagnosable condition. When it comes to adrenal fatigue, are there the same sort of like limits we're looking for this number or this number? How does because again it would probably be the same depending on the time of day of the person. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01That's what we can't diagnose, you know, adrenal fatigue per se, because it's just kind of a low level of not functioning as well. Low functioning. Yeah. It's going back and looking at what we can change in your lifestyle. Even though we're tired and exhausted, exercise. Get walking, right? It doesn't have to be CrossFit every single time. You don't have to hide your around the block.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And a lot of times people don't want to hear that.
SPEAKER_00You know, you want to fix. So even in adrenal fatigue, we're looking at lifestyle, right? More than medication, more than supplements. We're looking at, in your opinion, are there supplements out there that are worth their weight? Not that, not that you're sponsoring them, but like in the I would say generically, is there something out there that you think anybody is really benefiting from at this point? Like, oh, had a client come to me and say XYZ. No. So I always check like B12 levels.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And I always do check labs because I want to look for other things, right? Like we can't just blame our adrenals. There's many other things that we started somewhere else, I'm sure. Feel what we can test for in our blood to find out where we can optimize our other, you know, what is our ferritin doing? What is our vitamin D doing? What is our B12 doing? Let's take a really good look at your thyroid, get some thyroid hormones. Do we have thyroid antibodies? You know, what's our blood? What's our blood sugar doing? What's our pancreas doing? You know, there's so many slabs that we can get that rule out other causes. And a lot of times we do find other causes. And as far as supplements go, there's so many out there. There's so many out there. And everybody's gonna find their one. And so with any supplement, you know, as long as you're making sure that it's third-party trusted, tested, right and true, try it for two to three months. If it's not doing what it says it should be doing, then stop it. I don't want people to take it just because they think they should. I had a patient the other day ask me, she was like, you know, I saw this ad for a cortisol reset program.
SPEAKER_00Of course. There's always a detox, a reset. Yes. My aminos are off. My protein powder is bad. Well, yeah. I was like, if I get it, if I had a nickel for every like amino versus protein powder, like ad that I see, I'm like, wow, they really have me targeted. They really have figured out. Like so, yeah, if the information you're getting is being spoon-fed to you, is popping up in your ads, please stop and pause, right? That like this is not a message from the universe, like, oh, hey, this is what I've been looking for. This is this is curated. And in most cases, it's curated, it's curated for your age. It's curated for anything that you've clicked on out of curiosity. So, you know, if you have a curiosity about a supplement, about that, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say the thing, the same thing, the advice I would give to my clients is that reach out to Adrienne. If there really is something going on in your world that you're considering or concerned about, it deserves a lab. It deserves some sort of, you know, question mark. Or in Adrienne's case, when I'm talking to her, yeah, it's not worried about that. It's that's I was like, but it is so nice because as women, you know, whether we're postpartum or whether we're, you know, like we're easily dismissed. We're very easily dismissed because the research is so small and so little right now. And I think doctors, to be fair, want to just have the answer. They just want to be the quick one to answer it as opposed to like really listening. Because I mean, if we look at some of the cases going on, big cases right now in the news with women in postpartum and and access to their nervous system and psychotic breaks, like if some of these practitioners had just listened, had just taken note, had actually made sure that what they were diagnosing or treating for wasn't being, you know, capsized by another pharmaceutical, it's amazing. And we could, wow, we could spend two more hours on this one. But the point is, like you said, it's it's worth talking to someone like Adrian specifically to get to the bottom of it. And it's like, this is what I'm noticing. This is, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The difference is, you know, when we talk about this women's midlife health and really understand the factors that's going on in our body, yeah, we have to study that, right? We have to learn about the women's body and what happens to it during this time in our lives when our hormones change and what that's doing to our body. And honestly, we were not taught that for the last 25 years. And so, A, unless these clinicians have gone back and studied what happens in a woman's body during this transition, they don't know and they don't understand. The second thing is I wish that if you weren't taught and you didn't understand it, you wouldn't dismiss women. You would refer them to somebody who did specialize in this, like me. Adrian, how do people get in contact with you? Yeah, well, you can find me on my website is Vita, V I Diaz and Dog, A, Vita, uh, women'shealth.com. And on my website, you can read more about me. But also, like you know, I have a free 15-minute conversation. So, you know, if you want to just kind of find out if if we mesh as far as what you're looking for, what I'm looking for, I love that because I want to find out if we are a right match. But then once you book your visit, you know, we get to sit and talk and listen. And all my visits are an hour. You do not have to sit with me for an hour. But it gives me the chance to listen, to validate and educate.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Amazing. It's just so nice to be seen and heard and saw as a person. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for going back and doing this work. This is huge, and you are supporting all of us with this.
SPEAKER_01Well, it comes from, you know, a place where I went through it on my own and got my own misinformation. So I saw the gap and I thought, there we go.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for coming back and being with us today. We're definitely going to have more questions for you. So I hope that you're open to it at another time. If you enjoyed this conversation or you gained something or gleaned or had a moment of epiphany, please comment. Please ask questions. Let us know how we can support you best and keep these conversations going. I love a good message where someone says, I learned this, and here's my other 10 questions. I I just yeah, I love it. So, Adrian, thank you for not fucking drinking. We'll talk to you guys all next week.