The Grace and Grit Podcast takes the health fairy tale you've heard all your life and turns it upside down and inside out, helping women rebuild their relationship with their body once and for all. Placing the focus on love and respect, rather than the aggressive demands and unrealistic expectations that have become the norm, Courtney Townley is determined to help women mend the fabric of what is driving the female health story.
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Nov 14, 2026 · 6:11
You can spend two hours on the couch and get up feeling more depleted than when you sat down. You can also spend two hours moving, laughing, creating, walking outside, or doing…
Nov 13, 2026 · 7:15
Have you ever worked incredibly hard for something, finally gotten it, enjoyed it for approximately seven minutes... and immediately started thinking about what comes next? I…
Nov 12, 2026 · 4:05
When something isn't working, our default response is often remarkably predictable: apply more force. Try harder. Tighten up. Get more disciplined. Push through. Sometimes that…
Nov 11, 2026 · 6:15
I know this role well: the capable one. The woman who figures it out. Makes the call. Remembers the details. Handles the logistics. Notices what everyone else missed. The one…
Nov 10, 2026 · 6:15
Some problems have solutions. And some problems simply don't have solutions yet. That distinction can be incredibly difficult to tolerate when your brain wants certainty,…
Nov 9, 2026 · 4:41
There's a difference between loving someone and assuming responsibility for their experience. A very big difference. And yet many of us have spent years picking up other people's…
Nov 8, 2026 · 6:25
There is an extraordinary number of people, platforms, problems, and algorithms competing for your attention every single day. And most of them are very good at getting it. The…
Nov 7, 2026 · 6:54
A piece of music without rests isn't richer because every second contains sound. Eventually, it just becomes noise. Life isn't all that different. Yet we've become remarkably…
Nov 6, 2026 · 5:19
Have you ever caught yourself racing through your day when absolutely nothing is chasing you? Walking faster. Eating faster. Answering messages immediately. Feeling pressure to…
Nov 5, 2026 · 6:22
When something important keeps falling off your list, it's easy to assume you have a motivation problem. Maybe you need more discipline. More commitment. A better routine. A…
Nov 4, 2026 · 4:46
You can look at your calendar and think, "I shouldn't be this tired." But your calendar only shows what you're doing. It doesn't show everything you're carrying. The decision you…
Nov 3, 2026 · 6:28
We say our health matters. Our relationships matter. Creativity matters. Joy matters. Being present for the people we love matters. But do those things actually get the best of…
Nov 2, 2026 · 6:26
We're pretty good at understanding that money is finite. If there's $300 in the account, spending $900 is eventually going to create a problem. And yet, we often refuse to apply…
Nov 1, 2026 · 10:57
There comes a point in midlife when the strategies, expectations, roles, and routines that once worked beautifully start creating more friction than flow. Our instinct is often…
Oct 31, 2026 · 5:24
Strong does not always mean pushing harder. Sometimes it means knowing when to rest, when to ask for help, and when to give yourself permission to release something gracefully.…
Oct 30, 2026 · 6:12
Every January, millions of women vow to start fresh. And most of them are starting from a significant deficit. What if the preparation started now instead? In this episode I use…
Oct 29, 2026 · 6:39
Something specific happens at the end of the year that makes comparison particularly sharp. The natural impulse to take stock collides with the curated highlight reels of…
Oct 28, 2026 · 6:36
This time of year, a lot of attention goes toward what other people need. What the family needs. What the gatherings require. What the season demands. And quietly, without much…
Oct 27, 2026 · 6:10
In endurance sports there is a practice called tapering. In the weeks before a major race, athletes deliberately reduce their training volume. Not because they are giving up.…
Oct 26, 2026 · 9:05
The season will expand to fill whatever space you give it. You get to decide how much that is. In this episode I distinguish between what is truly non-negotiable and what is…
Oct 25, 2026 · 7:34
Coping and recovering can look remarkably similar from the outside. Both involve a pause in the difficulty. Both offer some form of relief. But they produce completely different…
Oct 24, 2026 · 9:23
There is something interesting about the things we have done long enough that we stop questioning them. They become invisible. We cannot imagine life without them. Not because…
Oct 23, 2026 · 8:44
There is a particular kind of aliveness that comes from doing something that is completely, authentically yours. Not a template. Not someone else's version of how it should be…
Oct 22, 2026 · 6:16
Most of us were never taught to say no cleanly. We were taught to soften it, justify it, apologize for it, and wrap it in so much explanation that the other person barely…
Oct 21, 2026 · 9:03
Most of us treat feeling centered as something that happens to us when circumstances are favorable. But what if center is not something you feel when things are right? What if it…
Oct 20, 2026 · 6:17
When you start doing the work of regulating your nervous system, something interesting happens. You feel better. You make clearer decisions. You stop absorbing other people's…
Oct 19, 2026 · 8:08
We spend enormous amounts of time and energy managing what we eat. Very few of us have been taught to ask why we are eating. In this episode I explore the critical distinction…
Oct 18, 2026 · 8:00
The wellness market is full of tools designed to hold you accountable. And most of them are genuinely useful. But there is something none of them can do. And understanding that…
Oct 17, 2026 · 6:08
Dolly Parton once said: find out who you are and do it on purpose. In a world that constantly invites us to be something other than ourselves, doing it on purpose is a radical…
Oct 16, 2026 · 7:40
Every year, millions of women arrive in January exhausted, depleted, and vowing to start over. And every year, the same pattern produced that outcome: a slow unraveling that…
Oct 15, 2026 · 6:20
There is a decision that a growing number of women are making quietly, usually without telling many people, because they are not sure how it will be received. They are choosing…
Oct 14, 2026 · 7:23
We talk about nutrition almost exclusively in terms of food. But there is another kind of nourishment that rarely gets discussed: the kind that becomes available when you release…
Oct 13, 2026 · 5:25
There is a story we tell about boundaries that sounds like this: some people just have them and some people do not. Today I want to dismantle that story completely. In this…
Oct 12, 2026 · 9:42
What if you thought about your body the way a smart investor thinks about a financial portfolio? Some assets are highly liquid and relatively easy to adjust. Others take years,…
Oct 11, 2026 · 6:48
If you do not define what enough means for yourself, you will spend your entire life chasing it. And here is the cruelest part: you will never catch it. In this episode I…
Oct 10, 2026 · 7:05
The fourth quarter of the year has a particular quality to it. Demands increase. Schedules fill. Other people's needs multiply. And if you have not decided in advance who you…
Oct 9, 2026 · 8:02
Before you follow anyone else's food rules, do you even know what your own are? And where did the beliefs you are currently living by actually come from? In this episode I make…
Oct 8, 2026 · 8:04
There is a version of commitment that has nothing to do with integrity. It is the stubborn adherence to a decision you made in a different season of your life, with different…
Oct 7, 2026 · 7:14
You would not expect a professional athlete to train at peak intensity fifty-two weeks a year. Their coach would never allow it. In this episode I make the case that your life…
Oct 6, 2026 · 6:48
The wellness world is extraordinarily good at selling certainty. And most of us, somewhere between the compelling testimonial and the limited-time offer, stop asking the most…
Oct 5, 2026 · 10:37
There are two sentences I use in coaching that have the power to completely shift how someone moves through a difficult relationship. They are not complicated. But sitting with…
Oct 4, 2026 · 10:19
There is a voice that shows up every time you step in front of the mirror. It has opinions. It compares, it critiques, it comments on everything. And most of us have been so…
Oct 3, 2026 · 8:33
Most people spend their lives chasing success without ever stopping to define what that word means to them. And the cost of that oversight is enormous. In this episode I make the…
Oct 2, 2026 · 7:24
Resentment has a bad reputation. We treat it like something to be ashamed of, pushed through, or managed away as quickly as possible. But resentment is not the problem. It is a…
Oct 1, 2026 · 10:41
Most of us make decisions reactively. Something comes up and we respond based on how we feel in that moment, what someone else needs, or what seems like the path of least…
Sep 30, 2026 · 7:50
We have a lot of metrics for health. Steps, sleep scores, bloodwork, body composition, VO2 max. And I am not dismissing any of them. But there is a question underneath all of…
Sep 29, 2026 · 6:37
Your body is sending you signals constantly. Hunger. Fullness. Fatigue. Tension. Overstimulation. The need to move. The need to stop. And most of us have spent years overriding…
Sep 28, 2026 · 6:45
It is too hot. It is too cold. There are no sidewalks in my neighborhood. I do not have the right shoes. I do not have enough time. We have become extraordinarily creative at…
Sep 27, 2026 · 5:34
In the Blue Zones, the regions of the world where people consistently live past 100 in good health, researchers kept finding the same things. And one of the most consistent was…
Sep 26, 2026 · 5:53
It is not a privilege that our bodies change. It is a privilege that we lived long enough to change. In this episode I challenge the assumption that a past version of your body…
Sep 25, 2026 · 6:38
In 2012, Google noticed its employees were eating too much candy. Rather than lecturing them about nutrition or appealing to their willpower, a team of behavioral scientists did…
Sep 24, 2026 · 7:21
Almost no one talks about the Tuesday. The ordinary, unmemorable, nothing-particularly-special Tuesday that is, in fact, the primary unit of a life. In this episode I make the…
Sep 23, 2026 · 7:29
Sleep is not a switch. It is a harvest. And what you harvest at night depends almost entirely on what you planted during the day. In this episode I reframe sleep as the report…
Sep 22, 2026 · 7:56
Loneliness and under-connection are not the same thing. And if you are treating them as the same problem, you may be reaching for the wrong remedy entirely. In this episode I…
Sep 21, 2026 · 6:53
The wellness world has sold us a very elaborate lie about mornings. That the quality of your day depends on a precise sequence of activities completed before most people are…
Sep 20, 2026 · 11:02
When was the last time you did something you were genuinely not good at? Not working toward being good at it. Just doing it, badly, for the pure experience of doing it? In this…
Sep 19, 2026 · 7:29
We pride ourselves on multitasking. But the research on this is unambiguous: what we call multitasking is actually task-switching. And we do everything worse when our attention…
Sep 18, 2026 · 6:54
The women who tend to their health most consistently are not always the most informed. They are often the ones who have simplified enough to actually follow through. In this…
Sep 17, 2026 · 7:21
Back in July I made the research case for walking. Today I want to do something different. I want to tell you what walking has actually given me. In this episode I share how my…
Sep 16, 2026 · 7:17
Rachel Carson wrote that those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. I have been thinking about that sentence a lot lately. In…
Sep 15, 2026 · 8:06
Lying on the couch scrolling your phone is inactivity. But it is not rest. In this episode I draw a clear distinction between what restores a human being and what merely passes…
Sep 14, 2026 · 8:28
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg spent his career studying something most of us have never thought to name. He called it the third place. Not home. Not work. The other place. The one…
Sep 13, 2026 · 8:33
The more accurate version of "you are what you eat" is this: you are what you absorb. And the same is true of information. In this episode I explore the difference between being…
Sep 12, 2026 · 7:36
Somewhere between the bodybuilding world and the wellness world, we lost something important in the conversation about strength. It got reduced to metabolism and body…
Sep 11, 2026 · 11:15
We have become so uncomfortable with emptiness that we fill every available moment with something. A podcast, a scroll, a task, a distraction. And in doing so, we have cut…
Sep 10, 2026 · 8:39
We have taken one of the most basic human activities and turned it into an anxiety-producing intellectual exercise. In this episode I hold a nuanced position: I am not dismissing…
Sep 9, 2026 · 8:41
Most of us think carefully about what we put in our bodies. Very few of us think with equal intentionality about what we put in our minds. In this episode I make the case that…
Sep 8, 2026 · 8:01
You can be in a room of ten thousand people and feel completely alone. If no one there actually knows you, the numbers mean nothing. In this episode I explore the difference…
Sep 7, 2026 · 6:57
This is not a biohacking episode. I am not going to tell you to buy a special lamp or track your lux levels. I just want to make the case for something so simple and so free that…
Sep 6, 2026 · 7:16
What if we tracked laughter and play and genuine enjoyment with even a fraction of the enthusiasm we bring to our step counts and protein grams? In this episode I make the case…
Sep 5, 2026 · 8:10
Your body is not asking for a perfect schedule. It is asking for predictability. In this episode I explore how the body's circadian rhythm, the internal clock regulating nearly…
Sep 4, 2026 · 8:01
My husband and I were talking recently about how full and heavy midlife feels right now. The parents to care for, the teenager still at home, the business to run, the…
Sep 3, 2026 · 11:31
You can eat well, exercise consistently, and sleep seven hours a night. And still spend your entire day physiologically rushing. In this episode I make the case that chronic…
Sep 2, 2026 · 8:54
In strength training, if you never increase the challenge, you stop getting stronger. The body adapts and then plateaus. The same thing happens in your social life. In this…
Sep 1, 2026 · 13:48
After thirty years in the wellness industry and hundreds of conversations with extraordinary health experts, I keep arriving at the same conclusion. Not a revolutionary one. A…
Aug 31, 2026 · 6:44
There is a feeling most of us were taught to be ashamed of. We call it a sin. We hide it. We dress it up as something more acceptable. But what if envy, honestly examined, is…
Aug 30, 2026 · 7:33
I have been alone but not lonely. And I have been surrounded by people and felt profoundly alone. Those are two completely different experiences. And understanding the difference…
Aug 29, 2026 · 7:34
I am very good at giving. I spent a long time being terrible at receiving. And I have come to understand that the inability to receive is not humility. It is a wall. And it keeps…
Aug 28, 2026 · 8:35
There is a voice that most of us know intimately. The one that says you are not doing enough, not being enough, not achieving enough. At midlife, that voice often gets louder. In…
Aug 27, 2026 · 6:20
Journaling is not about filling pages. It is about going somewhere you have not been before. And the quality of where you end up is almost entirely determined by the quality of…
Aug 26, 2026 · 7:21
Do you actually need rest right now? Or is rest the story you are telling yourself to avoid doing the thing? These are two very different situations. And knowing the difference…
Aug 25, 2026 · 41:26
Lindsey Sills is living proof that consistency isn't about perfection—it's about practice. In this episode, we talk about redefining health beyond weight loss, building…
Aug 24, 2026 · 7:53
There is a space between who you have been and who you are becoming. It is not comfortable. It is not certain. And it is not optional. I call it the hallway. In this episode I…
Aug 23, 2026 · 6:38
A lot of women tell me they have a healthy relationship with their capacity. And then I look at their schedule. Those two things do not always match. In this episode I draw a…
Aug 22, 2026 · 8:44
I often say that health is answering the question: how much life do you have in your life? Today I want to get personal and answer that question myself. In this episode I share…
Aug 21, 2026 · 6:36
Every time you elevate your life in some way, the problems do not go away. They change form. My mom used to say it to me when my son was small: little kids, little problems. Big…
Aug 20, 2026 · 13:19
Not every chapter of your life is supposed to run on forever. And the chapters that have ended are not asking you to grieve them indefinitely. They are asking you to close them,…
Aug 19, 2026 · 10:28
I have recommended the book The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga to almost every woman I have ever worked with. Because so many of the women I work with…
Aug 18, 2026 · 8:52
What if the way you think about your health and your life shifted from self-improvement to stewardship? From fixing what is broken to honoring what you have been given? I think…
Aug 17, 2026 · 6:44
Bryan Johnson has spent an estimated two million dollars a year trying to reverse his biological age. He tracks everything. Optimizes everything. Submits to more medical testing…
Aug 16, 2026 · 7:01
We love a clean answer. We love to know exactly how we feel and exactly what something means. But life is almost never that simple. And insisting that it should be is one of the…
Aug 15, 2026 · 9:45
Most of us have been told that resilience is the goal. To bounce back. To withstand the hard things. But what if there is something beyond resilience? Nassim Nicholas Taleb…
Aug 14, 2026 · 8:41
Not every relationship is meant to last forever. And treating one that has run its course as a failure may be one of the most unnecessary sources of suffering we create for…
Aug 13, 2026 · 11:26
We spend a lot of energy chasing happiness. But what if happiness was never the deepest goal? Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who spent years in…
Aug 12, 2026 · 11:40
I heard a quote years ago that I have never been able to shake. I have no idea who said it, but here it is: life is one long series of problem solving, and the sooner you accept…
Aug 11, 2026 · 7:19
When I was a personal trainer, one of my favorite techniques was to ask clients to do the exact opposite of their habitual movement pattern. Not because the opposite was right.…
Aug 10, 2026 · 10:16
We talk about minimalism like it is a design trend. Something you see in a magazine. Clean lines. Empty shelves. The five coffee cups you actually love instead of the forty you…
Aug 9, 2026 · 57:15
If you've been blaming your hormones for the exhaustion, mood swings, stubborn weight, and "I don't feel like myself" fog of midlife—this conversation will change the way you see…
Aug 8, 2026 · 10:32
My eight-month-old puppy Tilly recently chewed through my jump rope. She has also excavated my gym bag, destroyed a hip roller, and shown zero remorse for any of it. And I love…
Aug 7, 2026 · 8:52
Nir Eyal wrote that time management is really pain management. I think there is profound truth in that. But what I am even more passionate about these days is energy management.…
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