Posted by Shereen Kassam
on May 29, 2026
From the Founder
I Did Every Workout They Told Me To. My Body Did Not Agree.
The problem was never discipline.
I know what it feels like to do everything right and have nothing change.
HIIT classes, three times a week. Strength training. Running. MyFitnessPal open on my phone logging every meal. I was consistent. I was showing up. I was doing the things. And then I would get on the scale after weeks of this, and the number would be the same, or higher, and I would stand there trying to figure out what I had done wrong.
The answer I always arrived at was: not enough. Not enough effort. Not enough intensity. Not enough discipline. So I would add more. Another class. A longer run. A stricter eating window. I kept turning up the volume on a solution that wasn't working because I had been taught that if it wasn't working, the answer was always more.
It took me years to understand that I wasn't failing at exercise. The exercise was failing me.
Why Did Working Out Hard Make Things Worse?
Every workout is a stressor. That is not a bad thing. The right kind of stress, applied to a body that has room to recover, produces adaptation: stronger muscles, better cardiovascular capacity, improved metabolic function. That is what exercise is supposed to do.
The problem is the second part of that equation. A body that has room to recover.
When you are already carrying a high cortisol load from work, from caregiving, from the cumulative weight of being a Brown or Black woman in spaces not designed for you, your body does not have room to recover from an additional stress hit. High-intensity exercise raises cortisol sharply. In a low-stress body, that spike resolves. In a body that is already running at an elevated level, it stacks. The cortisol never fully comes down. And stress-induced cortisol redistributes fat to the abdomen while also helping the body hold onto it as a survival response. The harder I worked out, the more my body treated it as a threat to prepare for, not a problem to solve.
This is why so many women in BBR's community describe the same experience: months at the gym, nothing shifting, or things shifting in the wrong direction. It is not a motivation problem. It is a stress biology problem. The workout that works for a low-stress body can actively work against a high-stress one.
Why Were You So Hungry After Hard Workouts?
The ravenous hunger after an intense class is not a sign of weakness. It is a cortisol-and-blood-sugar response running on schedule.
Hard exercise drops blood sugar. The body responds by releasing cortisol to bring it back up. Meanwhile, the workout itself has already triggered a cortisol response. So you come out of a HIIT class with a cortisol spike, a blood sugar drop, and a body that is now demanding fast fuel to stabilize both. The craving that follows, for carbs, for sugar, for something dense and immediate, is a physiological instruction, not a failure of resolve.
I wrote about the cortisol-craving loop in detail in the last post, but the exercise version is worth naming directly: if you finish every hard workout and immediately want to eat everything in sight, your cortisol system is telling you something. It is telling you that the workout cost more than your body had to spend.
The exhaustion after intense exercise in a high-stress body follows the same logic. A low-stress body finishes a hard workout and feels accomplished, maybe tired, but good. A high-stress body finishes the same workout and feels flattened. The workout borrowed energy reserves that were already depleted. Rest that night is worse, not better. The next day starts lower than the one before.
Is There a Cultural Reason Brown and Black Bodies Are Told to Push Harder?
Yes, and it runs in both directions.
The fitness industry was built around a specific body type and a specific stress profile. The research behind exercise recommendations, like the research behind most wellness guidelines, was conducted predominantly on white participants with average stress loads. The conclusion that high-intensity exercise is the most efficient path to health reflects what worked in that population. It does not reflect what works in bodies that have been carrying the chronic stress burden that Brown and Black communities show up with in measurably higher levels.
There is also the cultural pressure that runs alongside it. Brown and Black families teach endurance. You push through. You do not stop in the middle. You do not complain that something is hard. Rest is earned, not given. When the workouts weren't working, I did not think the workouts were wrong. I thought I was. That framing kept me in the wrong solution for years.
The "no pain, no gain" framework was not designed with our stress loads, our cortisol profiles, or our recovery capacity in mind. It was a one-size-fits-all instruction sold to bodies that were never part of the sample size.
The workout that works for a low-stress body can actively work against a high-stress one. That is not a character flaw. That is physiology.
BBR was built for bodies that have been pushed past their limit. There is a different way to move.
No spam. Ever.
Why Does Walking Work When HIIT Didn't?
Walking lowers cortisol. High-intensity exercise raises it. That single difference explains most of what I experienced.
Steady, low-intensity movement, a walk outside, a slow cycle, a gentle swim, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for rest and recovery. It brings cortisol down rather than pushing it up. It improves insulin sensitivity, which directly affects how the body stores and burns fat, without triggering the stress response that makes a high-cortisol body hold on to everything it has.
Walking was the thing I had always dismissed. I had been doing it at the office, laps between meetings, never counting it as real exercise because I had been told real exercise had to hurt. When I stopped the punishing workouts and started walking consistently, outside, without a target pace, without an app telling me I hadn't done enough, my body responded in a way it hadn't in years. Not immediately. Over months. Body composition shifted in a way that classes three times a week had never produced.
The difference was not effort. I had been putting in enormous effort for years. The difference was that walking did not strain my nervous system. It gave back instead of taking.
What Does the Right Kind of Movement Look Like?
This is not an argument against all intense exercise. For a body with a well-regulated cortisol curve, low chronic stress, and good recovery capacity, HIIT and heavy lifting are genuinely effective. The research on that is real.
The question is whether that describes your body right now. If you are exhausted, if hard workouts leave you more tired rather than energized, if you are gaining weight or holding steady despite consistent effort, if you crave everything in sight after training, your body is telling you something. It is telling you the cost is exceeding the benefit.
What tends to work for Brown and Black women carrying a high stress load is movement that fits into the body's recovery budget rather than overdrawing it. Walking is the clearest example, but so is yoga, swimming at an easy pace, dancing without a performance target, and strength training at lower intensity with longer rest periods. The common thread is movement that brings cortisol down or leaves it neutral, rather than spiking it further.
Consistency matters more than intensity here. Twenty minutes of walking every day does more for a stressed body than three intense classes a week followed by four days of recovery because the body couldn't handle what was asked of it. The body adapts to what it experiences consistently, not to what it experiences maximally and then must repair.
I still move. I move more now than I did during the years I was grinding through classes. The difference is that I tie it to how I feel rather than to a schedule built around punishment. Some days that is a long walk. Some days it is shorter. None of it feels like something I have to survive. That shift, more than anything else, is what made the difference sustainable rather than temporary.
Questions We Hear About Exercise and Cortisol
Why did I gain weight even though I was working out consistently?
High-intensity exercise raises cortisol. In a body that is already carrying a high chronic stress load, that cortisol spike can stack on top of an already-elevated baseline rather than resolving. Chronically elevated cortisol signals the body to store fat, particularly in the abdomen, as a survival response. If the workouts you were doing were raising cortisol without allowing full recovery, they may have been contributing to weight gain or stalled progress rather than preventing it. The solution is not more intensity. It is a movement that works with your stress biology, not against it.
Does HIIT raise cortisol?
Yes. High-intensity interval training produces a significant cortisol spike as part of its mechanism. For a body with low baseline stress and good recovery capacity, that spike resolves within hours and the training produces the intended adaptations. For a body already running at elevated cortisol levels from chronic stress, the spike may not fully resolve, keeping the body in a prolonged state of stress. The result can be increased fat storage, disrupted sleep, stronger cravings, and persistent fatigue rather than the fitness gains the workout was supposed to deliver.
Is walking really enough exercise for weight loss?
For women with cortisol dysregulation, walking is often more effective than higher-intensity workouts because it lowers cortisol rather than raising it. Lower cortisol improves insulin sensitivity, which directly affects how the body stores and uses fat. Walking also has almost no recovery cost, meaning the body can do it consistently without going into a stress-and-repair cycle. Body composition changes from consistent walking in a high-stress body can outpace what intense workouts produce, because the body is finally operating in a state where change is possible, rather than one where it is holding on to everything for protection.
Why am I exhausted after working out instead of energized?
Post-workout exhaustion in a high-stress body usually means the workout cost more than the body had available to spend. When chronic stress has already depleted energy reserves and disrupted recovery, an intense workout draws from a pool that was already low. The body has to divert resources to repair the training stress rather than building on it. If you consistently feel worse after workouts rather than better, that is your body telling you the intensity is too high for your current baseline, not a sign that you need to push through harder.
What kind of exercise is best for Brown and Black women with high stress?
Movement that lowers or keeps cortisol neutral tends to work best: walking, yoga, swimming at an easy pace, strength training at lower intensity with longer rest periods, dancing without a performance target. The common thread is movement that fits within the body's recovery budget rather than overdrawing it. Consistency matters more than intensity for a stressed body. Twenty minutes of walking daily tends to produce better results than three intense classes a week followed by days of recovery because the body adapts to what it experiences consistently, not to what it experiences maximally.
How do I know if my workout is working against me?
Signs that your current exercise is adding to your stress load rather than reducing it include: consistent fatigue that does not improve with rest, cravings that intensify after workouts, weight that is not shifting or is increasing despite effort, sleep that is worse on training days, and a sense of dread before workouts rather than any anticipation. If several of these are true for you, it is worth pulling back on intensity and observing whether things shift. The goal is movement that leaves your body in a better state than it found it, not movement you have to recover from.
P.S. The walks I dismissed as "not enough" for years turned out to be exactly enough. Sometimes the body knows before we do.
