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.
Listen in the Podli app 🎧
Follow your favourite podcasts, listen offline and in the car with CarPlay and Android Auto, and always pick up where you left off. Free to try.
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…
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.…
Aug 6, 2026 · 12:20
Health is not the absence of disease. I feel strongly about this, and I want to make the case for it today. In this episode I share why I believe health is not binary. Your…
Aug 5, 2026 · 11:52
I teach self-leadership. I just happen to use health as the arena. Because if you can learn to lead yourself here, you can learn to lead yourself anywhere. In this episode I make…
Aug 4, 2026 · 10:49
I wrote The Consistency Code to help people live more consistently. But here is what I have learned: consistency toward what? Before the principles mean anything, you have to…
Aug 3, 2026 · 12:15
We are all building a case for something every single day. The question is whether you are building a case for what you are capable of, or a case for why you cannot. In this…
Aug 2, 2026 · 14:34
There are seasons in life that ask you to rest. And then there are seasons that ask you to rise. I have been living in the first one for a while. And I can feel the second one…
Aug 1, 2026 · 11:05
I read something recently that stopped me cold. The idea was this: you don't become what you aspire to. You become what you tolerate. I have not been able to stop thinking about…
Jul 31, 2026 · 10:06
What if the goal that scares you most is the one that's most worth pursuing? Not because you're guaranteed to achieve it. But because of who you'll become in the process. In this…
Jul 30, 2026 · 8:55
Modern life has become incredibly comfortable. And that's not always a good thing. We can avoid effort, discomfort, uncertainty, boredom, and challenge with the push of a button.…
Jul 29, 2026 · 9:35
We spend a lot of time talking about lifespan. And increasingly, we talk about healthspan. But what about joy span? What if one of the most important measures of a life is how…
Jul 28, 2026 · 9:09
I think midlife is a second loss of innocence. A moment when many of the stories we've told ourselves stop working. The illusion that we have endless time. The belief that effort…
Jul 27, 2026 · 8:06
Most health problems don't come from a single choice. They come from the accumulation of many choices. One glass of wine isn't the issue. One missed workout isn't the issue. One…
Jul 26, 2026 · 8:31
Avoidance feels good in the short term. That's why we do it. We postpone the conversation. Skip the workout. Ignore the symptom. Reach for the distraction. And for a moment, we…
Jul 25, 2026 · 9:35
Most conversations about fear focus on one thing: the fear of failure. But what if that's not the fear that's actually running the show? In this episode, I explore two fears I…
Jul 24, 2026 · 9:08
By midlife, most women have become experts in everyone else. What everyone else needs. What everyone else wants. What everyone else expects. And somewhere along the way, they…
Jul 23, 2026 · 8:28
I spent years collecting self help tools that never changed my life. Books. Podcasts. Courses. Certifications. I loved learning, but eventually I had to confront an uncomfortable…
Jul 22, 2026 · 9:48
For most of my life, I lived too far on the grit side of the equation. I believed effort could solve almost anything. Push harder. Do more. Keep going. Until I learned the hard…
Jul 21, 2026 · 9:44
Yesterday we talked about identifying the kind of fatigue you're carrying. Today we're talking about what to do about it. Whether you're dealing with physical exhaustion or…
Jul 20, 2026 · 10:15
Lately I've been navigating elder care, parenting a teenager, running a business, nurturing a marriage, and moving through perimenopause. And if I'm being honest, there are days…
Jul 19, 2026 · 8:07
Modern life gives us access to almost any food at any time of year. Convenient? Absolutely. But it also disconnects us from something humans lived in relationship with for…
Jul 18, 2026 · 7:20
What if one of the best things you could do for your health wasn't exercising harder but exercising together? Many of us are trying to solve loneliness and inactivity as separate…
Jul 17, 2026 · 9:44
Most of us love being good at things. Very few of us enjoy being beginners. But what if the awkward, frustrating learning phase is actually where the most important growth…
Jul 16, 2026 · 10:23
For years I believed harder was better. Push harder. Train harder. Do more. The problem was that my body often had a very different opinion. In this episode, I introduce heart…
Jul 15, 2026 · 10:13
For decades we've been told to chase step counts. But what if we've been missing the bigger story? Walking may be one of the most powerful health practices available, yet many…
Jul 14, 2026 · 10:08
The scale tells you one thing. Your relationship to gravity. That's it. It cannot tell you how much muscle you've built. It cannot tell you the strength of your bones. It cannot…
Jul 13, 2026 · 14:52
We track our spending without calling it obsessive. We track our schedules without calling it restrictive. So how did food journaling become such a loaded topic? In this episode,…
Jul 12, 2026 · 8:54
If you've ever found yourself staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m., wondering why your body suddenly forgot how to sleep, you're not alone. As someone deep in the perimenopausal…
Jul 11, 2026 · 7:58
Kids are always listening. But what often gets overlooked is how much they're learning when we're not speaking at all. They're watching how we talk about our bodies. They're…
Jul 10, 2026 · 9:18
We often hear that it takes a village to raise a child. I think it also takes a village to keep an adult healthy. Many of us have quietly come to expect one person to meet nearly…
Jul 9, 2026 · 8:48
Something I often hear from my clients navigating midlife is: "I don't know what my purpose is anymore." I understand the feeling. But I think we've been asking the wrong…
Jul 8, 2026 · 12:24
If there were a pill that improved cognitive function, challenged your balance, elevated your mood, strengthened social connection, and reduced your risk of dementia, most people…
Jul 7, 2026 · 13:44
Somewhere along the way, many of us started believing that creativity was something we would get around to later. After the work was done. After the kids were grown. After life…
Jul 6, 2026 · 12:04
You do not have a focus problem. At least not in the way you've been led to believe. What most people call a lack of discipline is often a nervous system struggling to regulate…
Jul 5, 2026 · 10:55
If your home feels overwhelming, your nervous system already knows it. Most people think clutter is a housekeeping issue. Research suggests it may be much more than that. In this…
Jul 4, 2026 · 9:17
Today we celebrate freedom here in America. But there is a kind of freedom that rarely gets discussed. The freedom to walk without assistance. The freedom to get up off the…
Jul 3, 2026 · 10:26
Lately I've been thinking about two people I love deeply and the very different paths they are walking through later life. The contrast between them has taught me more about…
Jul 2, 2026 · 12:43
Watching my loved ones age up close has changed the way I think about getting older. It has forced me to look beyond appearance and confront the things that will matter most in…
Jul 1, 2026 · 9:16
What if the extra weight your body is carrying right now is not a problem to solve, but a message to understand? In this episode, I explore the concept of "love weight," a term I…
Jun 30, 2026 · 5:50
The story our culture tells about midlife for women is almost entirely about loss. The body changing. The energy declining. The best years receding in the rearview mirror. This…
Jun 29, 2026 · 7:57
You've been setting the bar based on who you think you should be on your best days. And then feeling like a failure every time you show up as a real person having a real day.…
Jun 28, 2026 · 7:29
I have never — not once — worked with a woman who hated every step of her health journey and managed to sustain it for years. Hate, it turns out, has terrible fuel economy. It…
Jun 27, 2026 · 5:48
Two clients. Opposite problems. Both completely stuck. The first had so much grace for herself that she never actually began — every week a good reason, every month a better time…
Jun 26, 2026 · 7:52
At some point in almost every woman's health journey, the difficulty of the process starts to feel like evidence that something has gone wrong. Like the struggle itself is a sign…
Jun 25, 2026 · 6:05
Elite athletes don't train at the same intensity 365 days a year. They build in cycles of high effort and deliberate recovery. And their long-term performance isn't just…
Jun 24, 2026 · 5:53
You know the feeling. You got off track. And instead of course-correcting, you spent the next three days — or three weeks — making it worse, feeling terrible about it, and…
Listen in the Podli app 🎧
Follow your favourite podcasts, listen offline and in the car with CarPlay and Android Auto, and always pick up where you left off. Free to try.
Your podcast? Get the Podli badge for your site
