WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. adults who exercise at least 30 minutes every day or nearly every day are significantly less likely to report experiencing stress than those who don’t exercise. The relationship between exercise and reduced stress is especially strong among women, with those exercising frequently expressing far less stress than women who don’t exercise. The stress gap is much smaller between high- and low-exercise men.
Specifically, 56% of women who exercised zero out of the past seven days reported experiencing stress the prior day. This drops to 51% among women who exercise once or twice a week, 47% among those exercising three to five days and 45% among those exercising six to seven days. The 11-percentage-point difference in stress between those never exercising versus exercising nearly daily represents a 20% drop in the probability of experiencing stress.
For men, there is just a three-point difference in reported stress between low and high exercisers (43% vs. 40%, respectively), representing a 7% decline in the probability of stress. Among all adults, the probability drops by 14%.
Gallup’s measurement of daily experiences of stress and weekly exercise rates is part of its ongoing National Health and Well-Being Index. The most recent results are based on 16,946 U.S. adult Gallup Panel members surveyed by web over the first three quarters of 2025. For the measurement of stress experiences, Gallup asks, “Did you experience stress a lot of the day yesterday?” For the measurement of exercise habits, Gallup asks, “In the last seven days, how many days did you exercise for 30 or more minutes?”
Currently, 46% of U.S. adults report having experienced a lot of stress the day before. About one in eight (13%) report having exercised for at least 30 minutes in six or seven days the prior week, compared with 27% who report having zero days of exercise. Exercise habits are similar between genders, with 14% of men and 12% of women exercising six or seven days a week and 26% of men and 28% of women not exercising at all.
Exercise Most Strongly Linked to Lower Stress Among Younger and Older Women
Exercise is associated with less stress across all age groups. However, larger differences are found between women and men in the youngest (18 to 44) and oldest (65 and older) age groups, which account for the overall differences between genders. Among women aged 18 to 44, the probability of experiencing a lot of stress each day drops from 68% among non-exercisers to 54% among daily/nearly daily exercisers, double the reduction found among the least and most active exercising men of the same age group (58% to 51%). And among women aged 65 and older, the stress probability drops from 39% to 27%, compared with essentially no change among men aged 65 and older (25% to 24%).
The relationship between exercise and stress is similar for both men and women among those aged 45 to 64.
Implications
These findings reinforce that exercise is consistently associated with a significant reduction in daily stress, but they also show that its benefits are not experienced uniformly across groups. This pattern aligns with long-standing research showing that women report higher baseline levels of experiencing stress and thus have more room to improve. Having higher baseline levels, however, does not sufficiently explain the differences found here, given the outsized reduction in stress found among women who exercise regularly.
While the relationship between stress and exercise may be partially reciprocal (i.e., those with a lot of stress may be less likely to exercise), substantial research demonstrates that a strong relationship exists the other way around. For example, exercise improves mood-regulating neurochemical activity such as reducing the stress hormone cortisol or enhancing dopamine and endorphins that are beneficial to both genders but that may be more influential in women's mental health than men's.
That being noted, other lifestyle factors closely associated with stress could also be playing a role. For example, women are more likely than men to experience worry, to be clinically depressed, to struggle with sleep and to worry about money, all of which could reduce the likelihood that they choose (or are otherwise able to make the time) to exercise. But these relationships can also exist in the other direction. Sleep quality, for example, improves with exercise, an area where women report more challenges than men and thus can help explain why reduced odds of stress with greater activity are both broader and steeper among women. Other factors, such as hours worked per week, could also play a role for both genders, with individuals who work much heavier hours carrying more daily stress while simultaneously having less time to exercise, compared with their counterparts with more manageable workloads.
The payoff of exercise in stress reduction may also depend on the social and psychological context in which it occurs. Thus, if women are more likely than men to exercise with a friend or participate in group or community-based exercise programs, that increased social interaction could enhance its stress-reducing effects. In contrast, older men demonstrate little to no relationship between daily stress and increased activity, pointing to a different set of forces shaping their mental health in later life. Older men begin with relatively lower levels of daily stress, leaving less room for exercise to produce measurable gains. Their physical activity may also be more solitary or medically directed, offering fewer psychological or social benefits.
These patterns underscore how daily emotions can diverge across demographic groups, with exercise influencing their occurrence in both physically and psychologically distinct ways. Recognizing these differences helps to clarify why the same behavior can yield different forms of wellbeing outcomes across demographic groups and highlights the value of studying subgroups to fully understand large population health.
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Learn more about how the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index works. Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.
