374: The Great Health Declutter: What to Keep & What to Let Go

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Courtney Townley 0:01
Are you drowning in wellness apps, expired supplements, fitness equipment and enough life changing health articles to fill an entire Wellness Convention Center? If that’s you, you are so not alone. In this episode, we are tackling the elephant, or should I say, the dusty treadmill in the room, which is health clutter. It is time to Marie Kondo your wellness journey. Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action, steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:53
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast. My name is Courtney Townley, and I am the hostess of this show. I am so delighted that you’re here, if you are not familiar with the name Marie Kondo, she’s a Japanese organizing consultant and author who gained worldwide fame for her KonMari Method of tidying up. Basically, she just helps people to declutter in a really systematic and effective way. And she is by no means the only professional out there who does this work. There are so many books now, so many different programs and resources to help people declutter their life.

Courtney Townley 1:27
And why does this matter? Why is decluttering such a profound and impactful skill set to learn in terms of improving your health? Well, according to a 2023 study published by the Journal of environmental psychology, people with cluttered living spaces had a 40% higher cortisol level throughout the day compared to those with more organized environments. And this physiological impact extends beyond just physical clutter when we’re overwhelmed with health information and commitments, our stress response is similarly activated. So what does it mean to declutter your health because I did title this episode the great health declutter and health decluttering basically means intentionally simplifying and streamlining your wellness practices by removing unnecessary complexities outdated habits and excess information that create mental and physical overwhelm rather than support your well being. And this is especially important for midlife women. Why?

Courtney Townley 2:44
Well, we are going through hormonal changes at midlife, perimenopause and menopause that can create physical and mental, mental and emotional fluctuations. Right? Hormones affect everything about us, and it makes it essential to have clear, manageable health practices, rather than overwhelming protocols. I say this all the time on the show, but I do not know a midlife woman who needs more stress in her life. We also, at midlife, tend to have a lot of time constraints right from multiple life roles. We are in the throes of our careers. We might have family or friends that we’re helping to care for, and this basically means that we have less time for self care. And so if we’re over complicating and really pursuing incredibly difficult protocols, that takes a lot of time, and ultimately that’s going to be a problem for consistency. There’s also a lot of increased marketing targeted at midlife women, that can lead to information overload and the pressure to fix everything at once. I see this so much right now.

Courtney Townley 3:56
It’s great that we’re having these conversations about menopause and educating women about what is actually happening and all of the resources that are available for them to lessen their suffering through that transition. But oh my word is there so much information coming at women now, some of it useful, and a lot of it not. And so we have to discern between what is actually helpful to our journey and what isn’t. And then we have the accumulation of decades of advice and the the maybe the buying of supplements and fitness equipment, and we kind of need to have a periodic reassessment of that in order to not overwhelm and suffocate our brains and mental bandwidth is also pretty challenged at midlife.

Courtney Townley 4:50
I know for me, I definitely am experiencing some brain fog and some struck some trouble focusing in ways that I have previously not experienced again because. Of midlife hormonal transition, and so when I clutter my life and my wellness process with things that aren’t necessary, it just makes all of that more difficult. So the cost of not decluttering your health practices can be significant. So we not only jack up our stress and anxiety with information overload. But we also tend to waste a lot of resources, money being one of them, on unused supplements, unused memberships, unused equipment.

Courtney Townley 5:37
We experience a lot of decision fatigue from having too many health choices and options. I tell you what, I go into any business this day and age, and if they only give me three options, I am such a happy camper. But if they show me a wall of options, it just makes me want to run out and get in my car and never go back. Case in point, I went to have my nails painted the other day, and I just told her, because most nail tech salons have 1000 different nail colors that you can choose from. And so I told the woman who was my provider, like, please just choose three, like, bright pink colors. And she did. And I loved what what came of that, but it helped me to reduce the overwhelm in that moment.

Courtney Townley 6:26
Also we have reduced effectiveness of health efforts when we have a really scattered focus. And I see this so much in the work that I do with my clients, where they are trying to piecemeal together, 40, 5060, years of different health protocols, and they’re not getting anywhere because they’re not actually showing up for any one thing with any degree of consistency, and when we’re scattered and unfocused and overwhelmed, we have a whole lot less time and energy for the practices that truly make a difference.

Courtney Townley 6:58
So how do we take stock of the things that are cluttering our own health journey. In other words, how do we take stock of your health clutter? Well, here are a couple things that you might want to consider. What information is creating clutter for you, right? Is it certain accounts that you follow on social media? Is it the endless supply of newsletters that you have subscribed to that are entering your inbox? Do you have a ton of books that you purchase but you never read? Are you the member of 1000 Facebook groups but never really participate? Are you listening to a ton of podcasts with conflicting information? YouTube videos would also kind of be in alignment with that. Are you saving a bunch of things to read later, but you never circle back to? So information overload is a very real form of clutter, right?

Courtney Townley 7:53
It can definitely overwhelm our brains, and it doesn’t really serve the purpose of helping us to get traction with our health and well being. So I always think of information kind of like a hoarder, like someone who hoards things in their home. They Hoard objects, but we can do the same thing with information. We just consume and consume and consume, but we’re not actually doing anything with that information. So I’ve heard this phrase many times over, but infobesity is a very real challenge of our time.

Courtney Townley 8:31
We’re hurting our own chemistry with over consumption of information. Another type of health clutter that you might be very familiar with is really having multiple conflicting diets and eating plans that you’re trying to partake in. I see this a lot. I see women who will tell me in one conversation, well, I don’t think I should eat carbs. I definitely think I should be fasting for like 16 hours a day. I want to be eating mostly carnivore like, oh my gosh, the amount of diet dogma that they are trying to process in their brain overwhelms me, and I’m not even the person who’s doing it.

Courtney Townley 9:17
So I definitely see I call these room bouncers, people who are constantly bouncing from strategy to strategy to strategy, and at some point, usually around midlife, it’s like they’re trying to piecemeal all the things that they’ve learned over their entire lifetime to try to create progress. So they end up going really wide with their approach, but never deep, and that really doesn’t get them anywhere. Another type of health clutter is unused gym memberships and fitness equipment, right? The number of dusty treadmills and, you know, weights and get gadgets and gizmos that are just collecting dust in your house. If you have not used these things, you. In years, it is probably time to release them.

Courtney Townley 10:05
Another example of something that you may be able to relate to in terms of health clutter is supplements and vitamins, right? I am guilty of this for sure. Like a lot of times throughout the year, I will have to clean out my supplement cabinet because things get so outdated, right? They’re not even good anymore. Or there are supplements that I don’t even know why I have them. I don’t even know what they’re for. And so if you are someone who can relate to that, just clearing out and creating space wherever you store your supplements can feel so liberating.

Courtney Townley 10:40
So let’s talk about some less obvious things that also create health clutter, because I think those are some of the bigger obvious ones. Less obvious would include this day and age having so many wellness apps and trackers, right? So we’re trying to track our metrics in 1000 different ways. Rather than just picking like maybe three to five metrics that we’re trying to track, we’re downloading every app our friend or Instagram recommends, and it’s just cluttering our phone and we’re not even opening these apps.

Courtney Townley 11:17
Other Health clutter that you might be familiar with, I would say, is juggling a lot of wellness professionals without there being any communication between those professionals. I find this creates a ton of overwhelm for my clients, where they’re going to a naturopath and their primary and they’re going to maybe an acupuncturist and an endocrine specialist, and none of those people are communicating with one another, and so they’re getting different protocols and different recommendations from all these different providers to the point that the patient, the person, is completely overwhelmed and not doing anything with that information.

Courtney Townley 11:59
Commitments and obligations. We commit to a trainer, we commit to a program, we commit to a gym, and we go through a season of our life where it is no longer a good fit. I will tell you, this is very relevant for me right now. I’ve worked with the same coach for many years, I think, almost five years, and I went through a lot of turmoil in my personal life in the fall, with my dad having brain surgery, and just my brother having surgery, I just had a lot going on, and I hadn’t really been excited about my programming in a while, and so I just decided to extend myself the grace of Just telling him I’m going to take a break. I can’t tell you when I’m coming back.

Courtney Townley 12:44
But for now, the best thing for my health and well being is for me to just back off and train in ways that are much more simplified than what I was doing at the time. And man, did that just help me so much. It reduced so much unnecessary stress because I was feeling so guilty and bad that I wasn’t able to perform at the level that I was prior. So just giving myself the grace and the permission to change how I was approaching my fitness felt really good. We also relationships tend to shift.

Courtney Townley 13:22
I can think of a client I had years ago, this was probably 20 years ago, who had been going to the same gym for years. I mean, like, a decade, and he was like, you know, I’m gonna actually join a new gym. And I asked him, Why, like, why are you leaving? You’ve been there forever. I love seeing you there all the time. Why are you leaving? And he said, You know, I just feel like sometimes relationships aren’t really giving you back the energy that they once did, and so you got to shake things up a little bit. And I thought that’s so brilliant, because it’s so true, especially with an environment like a gym. You might work out at the same gym for years and love it, and then all of a sudden it just kind of feels flat. It doesn’t feel as exciting or as nourishing as it once did. So why not give yourself permission to change right? Declutter your life in that way.

Courtney Townley 14:17
And then I would also say maybe a less obvious piece of health clutter is carrying the emotional burden of comparison, right? Comparing your journey to other people that really it’s so un useful, and it’s really just clutter. It’s just stuff that’s getting in the way of you being able to focus on your stuff and do your best and compete with yourself, right? And what happens when you compare yourself to a lot of other people is you become a room bouncer, like I mentioned earlier, you become one of those people who bounces from thing to thing to thing to thing, but you never really do a deep dive into anything. I.

Courtney Townley 14:59
Okay, so now that we kind of have a little bit of an idea of what some health clutter might look like for you, how do we start making decisions to clear some clutter out of our life and make sure that we’re not bringing more clutter in? And that really boils down to asking some good questions. So here are a few questions I think are worth considering. The first one is, will this practice, this item, or this commitment, actually improve my health outcomes, or am I just collecting it just in case, right like sometime down the pipeline, I might use this.

Courtney Townley 15:45
Some examples of this are keeping really old DVDs that you honestly never really used in the first place, or fitness equipment that you never really used and you certainly haven’t used in several years, just in case the gym closes, or just in case you get inspired to go back to them, that’s clutter. Get rid of it. Open up that space in your life. Another example might be storing protein powders or pre workout supplements from different phases of your fitness journey, even though they’re probably outdated, they’re expired and you haven’t used them in a really long time. Or you keep drawers right full of the resistance bands, the ankle weights or other fitness accessories that you haven’t touched in years that would go along with the fitness equipment.

Courtney Townley 16:35
Or another example, I do this. I am so guilty of this, I save a ton of healthy recipes, but then I never open those recipes. I’m not really utilizing those things. Another great question to be asking yourself is, is this in line with my current health philosophy? Is this in line with what I believe health to be at this stage of my life. So examples of this are, you might be somebody who believes in whole food nutrition, and yet you’re stockpiling miracle supplements, all these supplements that are promising to bio hack your way to health. There’s a conflict of interest there, or maybe you’re someone who really believes in moving your life, operating your life from your core values, but you are consistently following wellness influencers or professionals whose messaging conflicts with your values.

Courtney Townley 17:45
This is a big one, right, especially in the social media world. Like I pretty much at this stage of my life and my career, I refuse to follow anyone who uses their body to sell their programs, their messaging, their promise, because it is so misaligned with what I truly believe health to be, and I have so much evidence of women that I’ve worked with over the years, and also being one of these women myself for many years, who could look physically great from The outside, but was a disaster on the inside. So I just don’t follow people who use their body image to sell product or programs.

Courtney Townley 18:31
Another example might be, and this is a big one, I see a lot of clients do this. They believe in dressing their current body with respect. That is a philosophy of theirs, that no matter what the size, I’m going to dress my body with respect, but at the same time, they’re keeping clothing that doesn’t fit for when they you know, it’s gold, it’s a maybe gold clothing, or clothing that they’re keeping, just in case they go back to a certain size. That’s health clutter, right? Like this day and age, most of us can dress ourselves. We can get, you know, a decent wardrobe for not a ton of money. Now, yes, we might have to shop secondhand. We have to be really, you know, creative in how we’re shopping, but the amount of closets in the world that are filled with clothing that will never be worn again is outrageous.

Courtney Townley 19:34
One more question I want to give you that might help you to declutter your health world a little bit is if I had to start my health journey from scratch today, would I choose to include this so I used to have, I had a juicer, a really expensive juicer, because I went through a phase where I was juice fasting a lot. I mean, I think it did it for almost 18 months. On and Off. I worked temporarily for a juice fasting facility, like I was all in on juice fasting, but I, at this stage of my life, would probably never juice fast again. It’s just not something looking back that I really enjoyed.

Courtney Townley 20:17
Now that I know as much as I do about health and well being it’s not something that I really think is probably the best thing for health. I’m not saying it might not be the best thing for you, but it’s just not the best thing for me. So I got rid of my health juicer. I sold it last year for not a lot of money because I just wanted it out of my kitchen. It took up a tremendous amount of space. Or maybe there’s like, a meditation app on your phone that you subscribe to you’re paying money for, but you never use it, because you find that for you, just taking moments of the day to do some simple breath work really works for you. Awesome. So ditch the meditation app.

Courtney Townley 21:00
Or this is one that a lot of people will be able to relate to. Maybe in the past, you have dedicated yourself to some really complicated meal prep systems, but it doesn’t fit your lifestyle anymore, and it doesn’t fit the way you want to live your life. So maybe get rid of those cookbooks or those instruction manuals or those books that are promoting that for you, because you’re not accessing them anymore, and it’s not something that, if you had to start from scratch, you would include in your health journey.

Courtney Townley 21:34
Or maybe there’s an exercise program that you’ve done in the past. I’ve done a lot of these where, temporarily It was amazing, and I really enjoyed it, and I can’t imagine myself going back to that kind of training at this point in my life. I’ll give you a great example of that. This. This won’t come as a surprise for some of you who know me well, but Pilates, I was an instructor trainer for a major company, and traveled the world to certify people, and I would be hard pressed to go into a Pilates class at this stage of my life for lots of reasons.

Courtney Townley 22:10
Now, please do not hear me saying that I don’t think it’s a great method for some people, and it doesn’t serve a purpose, and it can’t be a wonderful thing. It can be for me, it’s not, it’s not how I want to spend my time to train my physiology. So for me, that’s clutter. Like I’m not going to go sign up for a Pilates membership when there’s so many other ways I want to train at this age and stage of my life. So to me, that’s health clutter. For you, it might be like the perfect thing. So how do we let go with grace? Once we identify some of these things that are cluttering our life in terms of our health journey, how do we let them go?

Courtney Townley 22:52
Well, number one, I would say, know your reasons for letting it go, right, like for me, letting go of the juicer. I knew that it was going to open up counter space, that it was going to bring so much joy into someone else’s life, because I know a lot of people who love juicing, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be juicing anytime soon, and probably never again with any kind of regularity, so reminding myself of those reasons made it much easier to let go of. I also love the phrase for now, right? So when I’m letting go of something like the example I gave you with my trainer that I’ve been with for five years, it’s for now. I’m not saying I’m never going back, I don’t know, but based on what is happening in my life right now, it’s not a great fit for me, and it’s creating more stress than it is actually helping me to reduce stress. So therefore I let it go for now, acknowledge the value Something brought you in the past, right? I think that’s a really lovely way to let something go.

Courtney Townley 24:11
Oh my gosh. My years in the Pilates world, I would not trade them for anything, the people that I got to spend time with, the places I got to travel to, what it taught me in terms of being a wellness professional, how it helped shape me as a teacher. Oh my gosh, so many amazing gifts. Doesn’t mean that I want to be doing it at this stage of my life. I think a part of that too is also sometimes writing down, documenting the lessons learned before letting something go right? I could probably write a whole book about why I let go of juice fasting. And I’m so grateful for those lessons. I’m so grateful for my experience doing it for so long. Wrong, right? So I can thank it, and I can release it.

Courtney Townley 25:08
And also, I think it’s really powerful to realize that by letting something go, you are making space for something else, and you are bringing clarity to what is important to you at this stage of your life, and that can make it a lot easier to let go of things as well. So I want to, before we close, I just want to give you a couple notes on creating a sustainable path forward with health clutter, in terms of keeping your life clear of health clutter, when you get rid of health clutter, equipment, supplements, apps on your phone, you stop following certain social media accounts, whatever that looks like for you.

Courtney Townley 25:51
Please do not be in a hurry to refill that space, because I find as humans, we do this a lot. We leave a job because it was so stressful, and then we we get so stressed out looking for the next job, and we pick something that’s equally as stressful because we didn’t breathe into it and we weren’t really intentional about our next move. So be okay with space when you clear your closet of all the clothes that no longer fit, you don’t have to rush to fill your closet. Can you get comfortable with the space of not filling it? That is a powerful skill set when you consider adding something back in, really asking yourself, What purpose is this going to serve? Right?

Courtney Townley 26:44
Is this in line with what I currently believe about my own health journey, how I want to be in five or 10 years with my health journey? And for me, this just works really well when I’m considering purchasing or bringing in anything into my life, I usually give myself 24 hours at a minimum, because it’s amazing. What just pausing for 24 hours before investing energy, money time? A lot of times, if the next day I’m not thinking about it at all, there’s my answer. I just don’t want to do it. I’m not going to do it, but if I wake up the next day and I’m thinking about it and I’m really getting excited about it, I’m probably going to invest and how confident are you that this is something you are going to use on the regular for an extended period of time? If you’re only going to use it for a week, is it worth it? If you’re only going to use it for a month, is it worth it? If this is something you can see yourself using for months, years, decades to come, by all means, what an awesome investment.

Courtney Townley 27:53
And the other thing that I want to say is we will make choices around our health that unfortunately do clutter our lives more than they, you know, create a nourishing space, and when we identify that’s happening, all we need to do is extend ourselves permission to adjust. I thought this was going to be a good fit for me, and it’s really just not, and that’s okay, but I can keep trying to force myself into this box. Feel guilty that that treadmill I have to walk past it every day when I go wake up my kid or, you know, go down to the laundry room, whatever it is, I can keep playing that game, or I could just let it go.

Courtney Townley 28:35
I could release it to somebody who would use it and enjoy it a heck of a lot more than I am so to wrap this up, I just want to leave you with this less is more in almost every dimension of our life, maybe not financially, right? But when it comes to having less decisions to make, when it comes to having less stuff in our house that we have to maintain, when it comes to having less to think about, when it comes to our health and well being, we actually do better, because the brain is so easily overwhelmed, and there’s just so much opportunity in this day and age to collect stuff, To consume stuff, to consume information and to not really do anything of value with that. So let’s stop doing that.

Courtney Townley 29:27
I hope this was helpful. I hope it sparked something in you. I would love to leave you with just one question, which is, what is one thing, one piece of health, clutter that you are committed to letting go of this week. Just one right? Every great journey just starts with one decision, and with practice of making more and more decisions around that, we become better practitioners of releasing health clutter without a lot of drama. So considering today, what’s one piece of health clutter, I am willing. To release today. All right, my friends. I hope it was helpful. I will see you again very soon. Until then, take care.

Courtney Townley 30:14
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.