The tide was doing that flat, oily thing off North Avoca on Thursday morning, barely a ripple, and I stood there longer than I needed to before getting in. It had been one of those weeks. Work deadlines stacked on top of a sick kid, three nights of broken sleep, dinner most nights whatever was fastest rather than what I’d actually planned. By Thursday I felt it in my shoulders and, honestly, in my stomach too.
This is the piece I keep getting asked to write, one way or another. Not how to avoid a stressful week, because most of us can’t, but what a sensible gentle stress reset actually looks like once the week is behind you. Not a detox. Not three days of green juice. Something smaller and, I’d argue, more useful.
What a hard week does to appetite and sleep
I’ve noticed that stress rarely announces itself directly. It shows up sideways, as a run of late nights, as reaching for sugar at 3pm, as a gut that feels unsettled without anything obviously wrong. Healthdirect’s general guidance on stress notes it can affect sleep, digestion and appetite in ways that are individual and often mild but persistent, which matches what I see in my own scrappy journal more weeks than I’d like.
The Sleep Health Foundation has written about the loop between poor sleep and stress hormones running both directions, each making the other harder to shift. That tracks. The week I described above, I wasn’t sleeping badly because of one thing. It was cumulative, and it needed a cumulative unwind rather than a single fix.
Why I’d skip the dramatic reset
Here’s my one gripe, and it’s a small one. I think the wellness world’s fondness for the big reset, the juice cleanse, the seven-day protocol, actually works against people after a stressful stretch. You’re already depleted. Adding a restrictive regime on top asks for willpower you don’t have that week. What’s worked better for me, and for most of the people I’ve spoken to at the Saturday markets in Kincumber over the years, is going smaller. Two or three low-effort adjustments, not a overhaul.
So no elaborate plan here. Just the handful of things I actually return to.
Food that steadies rather than stimulates
After a stressful week I stop reaching for anything that spikes and drops quickly. Not because sugar is the enemy, it isn’t, but because I’ve noticed the crash makes the tired-and-wired feeling worse, not better. What helps is food with some slow-release quality to it. Oats with fruit and a spoon of nut butter. A proper breakfast rather than coffee and toast standing at the bench.
I lean on things like the overnight bircher with grated pear and cinnamon on the mornings I know will be rushed, because it’s made the night before and doesn’t ask anything of me at 6am. If mornings are calmer, the sweet potato and feta breakfast hash does something similar with more savoury weight to it, which some weeks I need more than sweetness.
Gut comfort matters here too. A stressful week often leaves mine feeling a bit off, nothing dramatic, just less settled than usual, and I’ve found that leaning into fermented foods, fibre and less processed stuff for a few days genuinely helps how I feel, even if I can’t tell you the mechanism with any confidence. Nutrition Australia’s material on fibre and gut health is a decent starting point if you want the detail rather than my anecdotal version. I’ve written more on this in Good Food for Gut Health and Happy Guts, Happy Brain, both of which I go back to more than most things on this site.
Evenings that actually wind down
The other adjustment is what happens after dinner. I used to think winding down meant scrolling on the couch with something calming on in the background, but that’s not winding down, that’s just a quieter form of stimulation. What actually settles me is something with a bit of ritual to it. A cup of something warm, no screen, the journal out even if I only write two lines.
I make golden milk with cinnamon more often the week after a stressful one than any other week, partly because the ritual of making it slowly is doing as much work as whatever’s actually in the cup. On nights my throat feels tight from too much talking or too little water, the honey and lemon soothing tea does the same job.
None of this fixes sleep on its own. But Better Health Victoria’s guidance on sleep hygiene points to consistent wind-down routines making a genuine difference over time, and that’s been my experience too, for whatever an anecdote is worth against a public health resource.
Movement without the pressure of a session
The swim I mentioned wasn’t a session. I wasn’t tracking pace or distance. It was cold enough that I mostly just stood in it and complained under my breath, then got in properly once I’d committed. That kind of movement, unstructured and slightly reluctant, seems to do more for a stressful week than anything with a training plan attached to it.
If a swim isn’t your thing, a walk works the same way, so long as it’s not another item on the list to optimise. I’ve written a bit more on the broader relationship between movement and energy in Fuel For Movement, and on the general stress picture in Prioritising Wellbeing to Combat Stress, if you want the longer version.
A slower Sunday, not a bigger one
What I actually do most weekends after a hard week is less than what I plan to do. I cook one thing properly rather than three things quickly, something like the warm grain bowl with roasted roots and labne, which takes an hour but most of it is the oven doing the work while I sit outside. I go to bed slightly earlier than feels necessary. I don’t plan the next week yet, that can wait until Monday.
It’s not much of a system, I’ll admit. But the small, repeatable version has held up better for me than any of the bigger resets I’ve tried over the years, and I’ve tried a few. The scrappy journal has years of half-finished detox plans in it to prove that point.
If there’s one thing I’d say to anyone coming off a stressful week, it’s to resist the urge to fix everything at once. Pick the sleep, or the food, or the movement, not all three. Small and steady beats dramatic and short-lived, most weeks anyway.
– Tanya Pryce, Golden Door Living
