Women's Health May 20, 2026 0 Comments

This One Daily Habit Sutton Foster Swears By Will Instantly Crush Your Stress and Boost Your Wellness—Are You Missing Out?

Ever wonder if living long actually means living strong? It’s easy to chase the number of birthdays, but what about the grit it takes to stay robust through ’em all? Lately, the buzz around longevity isn’t just about surviving—it’s about thriving despite the daily grind and stress that try to wear us down. At a recent Women’s Health Lab panel, some serious heavyweights—Claire Stern Milch from Elle, Dr. Tara Narula, a heart-smart doc from ABC News, and none other than Tony Award champ Sutton Foster—got real about resilience, movement, and how to outmaneuver stress that’s always lurking. Spoiler alert: Strength isn’t just physical, it’s mental—like being forged in fire and coming out a warrior every single day. Sutton even drops her fave wellness hack that’s as simple as slipping into a bath at night. Curious to tap into this powerhouse blend of science and soul? Dive in, because this convo might just change how you see “staying strong.” LEARN MORE.

5 min read

Living a long, healthy life is always a good goal, but conversations about longevity have really caught fire over the last few years.

The interplay of daily life stressors and long-term health was a big topic of conversation at a Women’s Health Lab panel called ‘The Science of Staying Strong: Longevity, Movement & Resilience’ hosted by Claire Stern Milch, senior digital director at Elle. Milch was joined by Tara Narula, MD, chief medical correspondent at ABC News, associate director of the Women’s Heart Program at Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital and author of The Healing Power of Resilience, along with Tony Award-winning actor and performer Sutton Foster, to dive into the power of resilience and strength, along with how to actively fight stress.

Sutton, who now leads retreats at Canyon Ranch, talked about the importance of fitness for longevity, and the one wellness hack she relies on daily. Here, more learnings from Sutton as well as health takeaways from the conversation:

Sutton moonlights as a fitness instructor.

Foster opened up about the importance of staying physically strong for longevity. “I have a side hustle as a fitness instructor at a wonderful place in the city called The Limit,” she shared. “It is not only a place where I get physically strong, but I feel like it pushes me to a limit where I go, if I can do this, I can do anything.”

But Foster said the journey to help her feel strong is a “daily struggle” and something she’s constantly working on. “I’m like, ‘Do I feel strong today?’” she said. “It’s a constant thing.”

She started leading a wellness retreat at Canyon Ranch after a conversation with an old friend.

Foster shared that she ran into someone she went to elementary school with at Canyon Ranch (who also happened to work for Canyon Ranch) who asked if she would ever want to lead a wellness retreat. “I was like, ‘Sure.’ But I thought, ‘Who am I to lead a wellness retreat?’”

Foster later turned that thought into “Who am I not to?”

Her retreat, called “Leading Women,” was born. “I’ve been a leading lady for a long time…but often I feel really alone,” she said. “I reached out to a lot of my contemporaries last year, and a lot of the women on Broadway, and we all are usually on our own. Everyone shared the commonality of loneliness.”

scientific laboratory equipment or setup

Getty Images for Hearst Magazines / WH illustration

Sutton Foster on stage at the Women’s Health Lab in New York City.

The retreat was built around the concept of empowering women to be the star of their own story, while building community. “Women of power can actually support each other, and we don’t have to be pitted against each other,” Foster said. “There’s room for more than just one of us.”

Foster said her retreat incorporates fitness, nature, creativity, play, and spirituality. “All of the wonderful tools that we need to be strong and present,” she added.

Sutton has a stress-reducing wellness hack she relies on daily.

She hops in the bath, daily, to unwind. “I do take a bath every single night,” she said. “I like candles, I have little fake glow candles, too, that change colors. It’s my favorite thing ever. I love a twinkly light.”

She also makes a point to be outside each day, along with journaling.

More Takeaways from the Panel Discussion:

Resilience, as a health marker, is important.

“For me, strength is resilience,” Dr. Narula said. She pointed out that everyone will face challenges in life, and all are vulnerable to change. “We never know when it’s going to come, but it’s never about staying strong and not being broken and going back to what we were. Strength is about, to me, being molded, almost as if we are clay, that things are going to happen to us, but we allow ourselves to be broken a little bit, and reshaped, and reformed into something that’s new.”

Being strong also means being able to take on challenges and recognize that you can still move forward, Dr. Narula said. “Maybe I look a little bit different, maybe my view is a little bit different, maybe my goal is a little bit different, but I can still thrive and have joy and meaning and purpose in life,” she said.

Stress is often unavoidable, but there are ways to lower it.

Stress can directly work against your health goals. “It starts in the brain,” Dr. Narula said. “We have a whole cascade of reactions that come from the brain, and our hypothalamus, and then we release hormones that then affect our adrenal glands.” Those included the stress hormone cortisol, and adrenaline, she said.

“All of these things essentially cause our blood pressure to go up, our heart rate to go up, they can trigger heart attacks and strokes and heart rhythm problems,” Dr. Narula said. “We just don’t think about all of this stuff that’s happening inside when we elicit this stress response.”

The best way to lower the impact of stress in your life is to try to avoid the stress in the first place. But that’s not always possible. Dr. Narula also recommends trying to accept your situation, being flexible about how you think about it, staying fit, eating well, sleeping, having social support, and doing what you can to maintain hope, faith, optimism, love, and purpose.

‘Micro-moments’ can help decrease stress.

Dr. Narula shared the value in findings “micro-moments” of building resilience to stress. “You can’t turn off the stressors in your life,” she said. “I can’t take away what is going to happen, but I can find moments to dial down the stress response.”

For her, that can mean exercising regularly, taking in nature, and holding her husband’s hand while watching TV on the couch at night. “It’s those small moments where you are so focused on what makes you happy and brings you joy, so that even when the stress comes, you have spent all of those little points in time turning it down,” she said.

Sutton added that she’s also conscious of her work-life balance. “I like to think of my life as a stovetop, so like what’s on the burners, what’s cooking, what’s on fire, what needs to be taken off the burner, what’s marinating?” she said. “I’m making some really conscious decisions. I’m saying ‘no’ more, which is really hard. I think in the past I’ve waited for like extreme burnout, or, like, my body breaks down and I’m sick… so I’m really trying to take the conscious pause to slow down and recalibrate my life in a very conscious way.”

The 3rd annual Women’s Health Lab was hosted by Hearst Magazines in partnership with Northwell’s Katz Institute for Women’s Health. Lilly served as title sponsor, with additional sponsors including Altra, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Ipsen, L’Oreal Paris, Organic Valley and WaterWipes.

Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.