358: Power-FULL Aging (Part 3): Supporting Biochemistry

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Courtney Townley 0:00
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, indispensable action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley, in case you haven’t been around for the past couple of weeks. Or maybe you’re a new listener to the show. This episode today is actually part three of a four part series all about powerful aging. So back in episode 356, we talked about the mindset of powerful aging, we titled that embracing change, Episode 357, we talked about reworking your approach to aging powerfully because obviously a lot of what worked probably in our 20s 30s. And maybe even 40s doesn’t work in the latter half of our life in the way that it once did.

Courtney Townley 1:08
And today, I’m really excited to have a conversation about biochemistry, things that we can do to honor and care for our biochemistry, that helps us to age in a powerful way. And to help me do that I’ve invited my amazing friend and colleague Lanie gray back to the show. If you’re a longtime listener, you’re very familiar with Lanie. But Lanie, and I go way back, and we have a lot of conversations about this very thing about biochemistry about different ways we’re approaching working with our clients to help them improve their own biochemistry. And the bottom line is two minds pondering a meaty topic like this is way better than one.

Courtney Townley 1:49
So I’m glad to have company today to have this conversation. And Lainey is also a Functional Diagnostic practitioner, which is essentially someone who looks at a lot of blood profiles and hormone panels to help women especially midlife women, I think makes up the large majority of her clientele. She looks at these things to help them optimize their health. So she is a brilliant brain to have on the show specifically today. So we both been working in the health and wellness industry for several decades. I think there’s a lot of experience between the two of us. And we’re both women who are also in midlife. So we’re rumbling with biochemical shifts that show up at this agent stage. I’m deep in the throes of perimenopause. Laney is in menopause. I’m kind of jealous, like I just want to get there. And so there’s gonna be a lot of goodness baked into this show. Again, thank you for being here. But let’s just dive into it. Because I want to cover as much ground as possible. And I don’t want this to be like a 12 hour long episode. So without further ado, Lanie thank you for being here.

Laini Gray 2:50
Oh, I’m so happy to be here. I love this conversation. I love when we talk and we just kind of riff and get some the meatiness and some great ideas out on the table because women just need to hear from women who are living the experience. Right?

Courtney Townley 3:04
Yeah, I think it’s so true. And I know I’ve told you that I want to have more conversations like this with you. Because I think that when you and I talk so often, I’m thinking God, I wish this was recorded. But also, I just feel like the way that we talk about things that helps to normalize sometimes the difficulty of these types of things before we rock and roll, because obviously, there’s always new listeners coming into the show, I would love you to just maybe tell listeners a little bit about your evolution in the health industry, because I think it’s really interesting. And it’s really relevant to what we’re going to talk about today.

Laini Gray 3:40
Yeah, so we’ll keep this the shortened version. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. So it took a long time. But I started out with a degree in recreation. So I very much love the idea of playing and having fun with life and recreating ourselves as much as often as we can. I got into personal training because I wanted to change my own physiology. I wanted smaller waist, I wanted smaller thighs, which I think is a story a lot of fitness professionals get into the field for through that I learned a lot about nutrition and exercise. And that was great.

Laini Gray 4:16
And then pretty soon I started working with people going but why why do they want to lose weight? Why do they want to do these things? So that evolved into becoming a health coach and a holistic health coach at that. And then I was like, wow, okay, you don’t want to get healthy to be healthy. They want to get healthy because they want to change their physiology. Right? We really have this really weird idea of what it means to be healthy. And about that time was when you and I met. And I remember the conversations were like, okay, fat loss is a product of health, we really need to be chasing health, not these other things.

Laini Gray 4:53
And at the time, I was suffering with some symptoms of things that I couldn’t out diet and exercise. So I’ll All these strategies that I’ve been using for a decade weren’t working. And so that’s when I like dove in and went into more functional nutrition and learn how to do lab testing and these kinds of things to really study the physiology underneath what’s happening with your hormones, your digestion, your detoxification, your mitochondria. And why that’s so important and why we can’t just out exercise, or cut our calories into a healthy state. Yeah. And as you and I know, we got so excited about this, this was so fascinating. And I’m getting healthy. And I’m trying all these new things, and I’m learning all this stuff, and I’m feeling really good. I even came to your house one time and even your husband is like she’s working out good. She looks good. And I’m like, Yeah, I feel strong. I feel good. And then things started to go awry again. And it wasn’t because I was sick or broken. It was because perimenopause, it started, I was like, What in the absolute hell? Come on? Yeah. And so for the last decade, that I’ve really shifted my focus into what does it mean to transition through this menopause state? And how does that affect us? mentally, emotionally, physically? And what can we do to take care of ourselves so that we can age gracefully and have a full life through the transition? And after? Yeah,

Courtney Townley 6:10
so yeah, I love this. I love so much about what you just said, like first and foremost, I just want to say like, it makes so much sense in my brain, that you have a background in recreation, mainly, like the fun and the play, because I think it just completely, it’s just a great overlay of who you are. I mean, I think anyone who meets you would say, yep, that makes total sense. Because I think you bring that to your teaching, like you keep things fun and light and even difficult conversations like this, like the hell we’re rolling through through perimenopause and menopause. The other thing that I love is that, I think you’re so right, I think so many of us who are passionate about health and wellness, unfortunately, came in through the door of just wanting to make it about the outside of our body, we just wanted to look better, we wanted to have, you know, a great bot and the six pack abs and whatever we just wanted to look apart. And as we stayed in the industry, and as we age ourselves, obviously, we learned the error of our ways. And we did some face plants, and we got to go course correct, which was a whole lot of fun.

Courtney Townley 7:09
But I also think it’s partly what makes us so passionate about what we do is that we learned the hard way that health is it really has nothing to do with the outside of your body and everything to do with the inside of your body. And the one thing, the last thing I want to follow up with is just, I hope what people are hearing in your introduction is that, as a professional with so much education on so many different layers of just biochemistry and health in general, you struggle to we all do. So we have all of this information, but it doesn’t mean that we aren’t going through our own rumbles. And I think that’s just really important to put out there. And again, it just makes us all the more passionate about having the confidence.

Laini Gray 7:52
Yes. I mean, that’s, that’s the piece too. And I know this is true, if you quote me too, when we work with people, and we have these conversations, what people, especially women, what they want to hear is they’re not alone, and they’re not crazy. And they’re not the only one going through this. And here’s the deal, like, you know this as a mom, right? You think, oh, gosh, I’m never gonna get my sleep again, with this youth with this little baby. And then they turn into six, and they’re falling down and breaking things. And then they’re like, you know, skateboarding outside. I mean, it never, it never gets easier. Should I say the challenge is just change along the way. And so we have to learn to adapt and really come back to those foundations of what’s important.

Courtney Townley 8:30
I wish I remember where I heard this. But I heard someone once say that life is a series of problem solving. And the sooner you accept that, the less you will suffer. Because it’s almost like we wait for this utopian place where we’re not gonna have problems anymore.

Laini Gray 8:48
It doesn’t happen. Different, they become different. It’s so

Courtney Townley 8:51
true, they just become different. And certainly that is true of this midlife transition and all that we’re going through. So to start this out, I would love for you to maybe share with listeners a little bit about what powerful aging means to you.

Laini Gray 9:06
To me powerful aging is really looking at the things I want my life to be full of. Yeah, how do I want to fill my life. And that’s what that’s what I really want. I want to be powerful, but I want life to be full of the things that bring me joy, the things that I love, and I want to have the energy and the bandwidth and the mental clarity to do all of those things. I want to have more time with my family more time with the people I love more vacation, more time outside. And shifting the focus to those things that I actually want in my life makes it easier to transition with how my diet changes or my nutrition changes or how these different changes affect because I want my life to be full. I don’t want to have the same life I had in my 20s where I was wanting to change everything about myself. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 9:55
so it’s what I hear is like, it gives you a really a compelling reason to do those things because you want to step into kind of this vision that you have. And I love that you’re starting with that. Because inside of our community, we talk a lot about creating what we call a power of vision, which is when you are standing fully in your power, no matter what your age or stage of life, what does that mean to you? And a lot of women, that seems like kind of a simple question, but a lot of women have never paused to ask themselves that, right. Another way of simplifying that is just what a success look like to you at this age and stage of life, and how would you need to care for yourself in order to show up for those things?

Laini Gray 10:36
Yeah, I mean, I am blown away. I mean, I’m not because it happens to all of us. We get caught in the throes of life and we’re busy. But one of the questions I will ask is what brings you joy? Yeah, that should be a simple question. And yet, I would say nine out of 10 of the women I work with can’t answer it.

Courtney Townley 10:55
Busy with the wing and the hustling and when

Laini Gray 10:58
I say okay, let’s can you get back to me by next week. They’re like, Oh, like that they’re really stressed. They don’t even think they can find what brings them joy in a week’s time. So we really need to shift like what happened that we have lost our joy or our passion or our power. Yeah. And then perimenopause hits, right. It’s like this chaos. So we really have to find those things when we have that reason, like you said, to get through to the other side. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 11:25
Yeah, I love that. I shared a lot of my thoughts about powerful aging in a couple episodes ago. So I won’t go too deep into it. But I do just want to share for this episode, that I think it speaks a lot to resilience. And I always say cell to soul, because aging is a natural decline. That’s what it is. We are going to lose capacity, literally from a cellular level to the outward physical level. And to do the work that needs to be done to slow that rate of decline. As much as possible. To me that’s powerful aging. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was, I think computer AT T ‘s book out live, because I do want to talk a little bit about resources for people to have more maybe input on this powerful agent conversation. But he says experiencing a physical, physical decline with age is not something we can control, everyone’s going to experience it. But the rate at which we decline, we absolutely have some control over and that’s really what we’re here to talk about today.

Laini Gray 12:33
Yes, Agreed. Agreed.

Courtney Townley 12:35
So what do you think is the biggest barrier if you had to name like one barrier that you think is the biggest for women to age powerfully? What do you think it is?

Laini Gray 12:47
Forgetting to look forward? We’re not looking forward, we’re looking backwards wishing we had something in the past, wishing I used I could be back to what I was here, or I wish I could get this off because I was happier than or all of these things. And so if we’re always looking backward, how can we, you know, chart a course forward? Right? If all of our energy is in the back, and we’re trying to repeat old patterns or thing go back to a time that we think we were happier. That’s a big problem. That’s a big problem. Like you’re not gonna get anywhere.

Courtney Townley 13:19
Yeah. Like focusing so much on the past. I always say this it like it bars you from actually stepping into what could be totally because you’re just chasing something you been not something that you could be? Yes.

Laini Gray 13:30
And I think part of that is that misconception that I don’t I don’t know where it comes from, but we’ll get married and then we’ll have kids. And then somewhere like the thought process stops, right, like I got past that point. Okay. So why have we not thought that you know what I mean, like, when we’re 16, we can’t wait to get out the house that we wanted to go to college, and we got we have all these things to look forward to. And somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten to look forward to all the things that still life has to offer. And then we get stuck in this really weird place where we’re like, Oh, if only I could fit in that dress, or if only I could, you know, go back. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, we need to be going forward. Yeah, right. We need to move forwards, we need to figure out how are we going to look forward and take action accordingly.

Courtney Townley 14:13
It’s interesting, you say that I hear I have a lot of conversations around purpose. Because I find a lot of my clients which pretty much range between I would say like early 40s, to maybe late 60s. That’s like my typical range of, of the clients that I work with. And the the topic of purpose comes up a lot. It’s almost like when the jobs are sort of winding down and the kids are leaving the house and the people and the things are taken care of. There’s this reckoning for a lot of women have, I don’t know, they didn’t feel like they don’t know what their purpose is anymore. And what I’m always reminding them of is well, you get to decide, yeah, you get to decide on your purpose. Yeah. It’s not necessarily something that’s going to find you you have to just decide what you want to put your resources towards. And do that. Make that your purpose.

Laini Gray 15:06
Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. And, and it doesn’t have to be this big grand thing. I think we get caught up on this too. If we don’t have this, well, I’m going to launch this big business, or I’m going to do this these big things, or I’m going to raise five children, you know, whatever the case may be, it can be I’m going to be really good at planning a garden. Yeah, do you know I mean, it really doesn’t have to we get we lose sight of the fact that simple things matter. Like if you planted the garden, how much time that takes you to have a garden, like I don’t have one. That’s something I would love to have more of in my life moving forward. And I know people and the people that have the most beautiful gardens, that’s what they do. That’s what they do. When we go to the farmers market, we’re really happy that somebody chose to stay home and work on a garden. So it really is finding something that brings you enjoy, because it will trickle out. It will have the purpose goes beyond you. When you put all your passion into it, whatever it is, whether it’s teaching piano lessons, or volunteering at the school, it doesn’t have to be this. I’m going to start a nonprofit, even though that would be great. Yeah, sure. That would be great. Right. But there’s other ways that we can have purpose and make an impact on the world at any age of our life.

Courtney Townley 16:15
Yeah. So I love this. I’m not surprised. I think we’re thinking along similar lines here in terms of like the biggest barrier, I think the biggest barrier that women have to aging powerfully as themselves. Yes. And I would say just underneath that is just a whole lot of beliefs that are holding them back from what would bring them joy, and what would help them to find purpose and all of the things, we have a lot of beliefs around it being too late us being too old. I’ve never been a person who I mean, there’s just so many limiting beliefs that get in the way of the work that we’re really actually calling ourselves into. So instead of doing that work, we just spend our life hiding, or we sit in the second half of our life hiding. Yeah,

Laini Gray 16:57
we’re complaining about it. We don’t like it, we wish me or something else. And yet we have everything to like, make this whole second act even better than the first.

Courtney Townley 17:08
Definitely. So let’s just because I mentioned it earlier, a few resources like people who I follow or authors that I love that I think speak really well to this topic, especially for women who are transitioning into the second half of their life. I put Peter A TIA who wrote out live, he also has the Podcast drive in case you want to follow him there. You’ve read out live Yes. Yeah. Such a great book. Stacey Sims, I think Stacey Sims is great. I do think she speaks a little bit more to the athletic woman. So I just kind of put that caveat there. So someone who is sort of in the the scene of racing or competing on some level, I do think she’s a great resource for that. Dr. Mary Claire Haber, who has she has a new book coming out called the new menopause. I think she’s a great resource for women. And she’s actually coming on the Podcast in June. Yay. Really cool. And then Lisa Moscone, I think, does a great job speaking to especially when it comes to the brain and cognitive function. She has the xx brain and then her new book is called the menopause brain. Anyone you would add to that list?

Laini Gray 18:19
Hmm. I’m reading the menopause brain right now. So I’m fine. Yes, yes. Good. She’s great. Those I mean, there, there are so many, but I think those are great places to start. You know? Yes, just in looking at. So

Courtney Townley 18:33
for someone who doesn’t like when we say the word biochemistry, and they look at you like you have 10 heads, like how would you explain biochemistry to someone who doesn’t know what that is?

Laini Gray 18:43
BIOS Chemistry is all the inner workings of yourself, right? You have cells you have, you have organs, you have tissues, you have hormones, you have enzymes, you have all of these things that are going on inside of you. And what’s really cool is they work whether you’re cognizant of them or not. So that’s pretty cool.

Courtney Townley 18:59
Can you think about all those process? Well, I mean, I can barely get

Laini Gray 19:03
the dishes done. Right? So so this happens without us realizing it. But the reality is, we have this huge chemistry experiment going on all the time. Yeah, all the time. Right. And we’re mixing things and adding things and taking out things and trying to see what works, you know, but we have to be aware of it. So we know how to make changes, or how to handle it, so that we get the best outcome?

Courtney Townley 19:27
Yeah, definitely. I love it. So good. I basically always say the same thing that your biochemistry basically you are a massive trillions of cells, and you have this kind of skin suit and muscle suit that holds it all together. But if we didn’t have that skin, and we didn’t have those muscles and organs, you would be a puddle of cells. Yes. And and those cells do a lot of jobs, right. I mean, they do the transporting, they do the detoxifying. They do the transmitting information, so many things. And so we want cells to be functioning at a really efficient rate. We want them to be able to do their jobs easily and effectively. And that’s really what we’re speaking to when we say biochemistry. So, I know you and I and you, anyone listening to this, you can go to the search page on Grace & Grit for the Podcast and look up lady’s name. I mean, we shoot. I don’t know how many times you’ve been on the show a lot. A few way more than a few. And we have had this conversation, but I’d love to summarize it here. What are some of the big ways our biochemistry shifts as we age that we should be aware of like, why are we rumbling at midlife with perimenopause and menopause?

Laini Gray 20:38
In the ways that we do? Yeah, so I mean, aging is a normal process, right? So as you alluded to, we kind of just start to decline. And the sad thing is, when you start looking at the research that actually starts around like age 25, you’re like, oh, gosh, yeah, you know, so it’s a, it’s an amazing that we’ve made it this far to our 40s or something, right, that we’re actually still in one piece, because we have this very slow decline. But for women, especially what happens is our reproductive system, our ovaries decide that it’s time to retire.

Laini Gray 21:08
And if you think about the grand scheme of things, yes, in order in as far as fertility and bringing babies into the world, we don’t have that capability anymore. And that’s okay. But when these ovaries retire in our production of progesterone, and, you know, and estrogen decline, that affects every system of our body. And that’s the conversation that we’ve missed, for the last how many hundreds of years in women’s health is that? Yes, our fertility is gone. But also the other functions of the body that estrogen and progesterone mitigate? Change. Right?

Laini Gray 21:44
So our, our ability to eat carbohydrates kind of changes, right, our our blood sugar and insulin shift, our cholesterol shifts, our brain function shifts, right, our mood changes, our skin changes, all of these things change, as our hormones are shifting through this transition. And it can seemingly come out of nowhere. And in some cases, it really feels like that. It’s like one day, you’re fine. And the next day, like who am I, but this is what’s happening. And it’s it’s different for everyone. So that gets really confusing for people as well is that it’s not the same from person to person, each woman will have a unique experience. There’s some hallmarks that many women have a little weight gain, some hot flashes, some brain fog, right? Most people you’ll hear them talk about that. But there’s other things like cardiac arrhythmias and different you know, heart palpitations, extreme anxiety, not sleeping, losing muscle mass, osteoporosis, like a lot of things can be really crazy. And it’s not that you’re falling apart. It’s just the hormones and the interplay with all those cells of the body. There’s a major shift happening.

Courtney Townley 22:48
Yeah, and I really appreciate that you’re speaking to this, because I think that, you know, health and wellness is always nuanced, right? It’s always very dependent on the person in front of you in terms of the place you’re gonna give. And I think that becomes even more true at midlife. But But I want to call out like, why that is, we live such different lives, right? The stressors of my life are very different from the stressors of your life. Yeah, our genetics are different. Yeah, right. Our makeup is different because of our lifestyle choices. I mean, there are just so many things that influence I always say, the stress bucket, right, the stress bucket is full of different things for all of us.

Courtney Townley 23:29
But what is true for all of us is the decline of those hormones at midlife, is affecting our capacity to manage the stress. Yes. And then we get to experience all the lovely things that you just described, which again, is a little bit different for all of us. I talked about this pretty extensively in the the first Podcast in the series, just highlighting Peter a tea is a beautiful, sort of explanation of the difference between healthspan and lifespan.

Courtney Townley 24:00
Alright, so healthspan being living as long as possible with as much health as possible, right, where lifespan is really just speaking to the age at which you die. It doesn’t say anything about the quality with which you live those years, certainly not on a physical level. So some of the things that we can control in terms of affecting our biochemistry, especially as we go through this midlife life shift. And please don’t hear anyone listening to this, please don’t hear that. We’re saying if you do these things, you’re not going to experience any effects of of your transition. Of course, you will, you still will. But you can minimize the amount of those effects with things like, let’s go over these what I know we’re just gonna bounce off of each other.

Laini Gray 24:45
I mean, here’s the deal, and especially if you’ve been following Courtney, you’ve heard her talk about this for how many years now? Yeah, you need to be strength training. Yeah, I mean, end of story. End of story, like women need to be lifting weights and it needs to be heavier than the pink dumbbell. as it needs to be heavier than the purse that’s going to have to shift from sometimes from some of those fun classes that are really fun and great for you for the all of the good reasons that your mood changes, and you get to move your body and you have friends. But you really have to maximize your muscle and your lean mass, because that’s what’s going to support you to start that garden, or to carry those grandkids or to move forward and feel good about it. And I can’t I mean, it’s it really is so important. And even Dr. Moscone talks about it right exercise and strength training, all of these things have effect on the brain, they have an effect on our bone health, right? It’s a big deal on our metabolism on everything. So strength training, I think is key.

Courtney Townley 25:39
Yeah, and let’s just kind of pause there for a second, because two things I think you mentioned that are definitely worth repeating. And this is a big one, because you and I are both huge proponents of making things fun, right? Like anything that you don’t enjoy, you’re not going to keep doing for the long term. So it’s really important that you find ways to enjoy the things that you are doing in order to keep yourself healthy. That being said, when I have clients who are taking a ton of random classes all the time, and then they’re also simultaneously frustrated that they’re not making progress. There’s a connection there, right?

Courtney Townley 26:17
Because progressive overload is a very relevant thing. In terms of building muscle mass, we need to consistently challenge the muscle in ways that are progressively making it more difficult. And a lot of times when we’re going to group exercise classes, that’s not happening. Because you have a new Instructure, you have a new instructor, every class you have a new set of exercises being thrown at you, you might be using weights, you might not be it is not ideal for progressive overload. Now, unless you’re doing like a structured small group type training, that can be very different. But I think yes, working your way to lifting heavy requires progressive overload. And I don’t think that many classes out there are actually offering that kind of approach, which can be problematic to actually building muscle.

Laini Gray 27:08
Yeah, I mean, it really is. And there’s no no saying that these classes aren’t fun. And you should definitely have fun. But that’s the thing. And I am not trying to knock anything here, I did some orange theory, I was a coach at Orangetheory. For a while, I remember that. And it was super fun. And it was super fun. But one of the things I struggled with was the pace at which the strength session of the workout was completed. And so because you’re at a certain pace, and if you’ve been in one of these classes, or if you’re like in a body pump or something like that, like you’re doing biceps for three minutes straight for the entire song, right?

Laini Gray 27:40
There’s no way you can lift your heaviest weight if you have to lift it for three minutes without but I definitely did not know. I remember I used to teach those classes and I did not I couldn’t push my if I wanted to stay up there and look the cutest and do all the things. I had to keep up with the most a more moderate weight. And so anyway, that orange theory, I have all these women in midlife that are getting into their orange zone or whatever zone they’re supposed to be in. And they’re like, Okay, I’ve done this for two months, and I’m gained weight and I’m not feeling any better. I’m like, Yeah, because this isn’t the right workout for you to change your physiology. Is it great for the energy? Yes. Is it great for the fun? Yes.

Courtney Townley 28:18
Are you ready? Cardiac capacity, ready for mobility or flexibility?

Laini Gray 28:22
Yes, sign up for the five ks and run those intraplate? Yes, there’s a lot of benefits, but it’s not doing what you need for your biochemistry at this age of life. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 28:32
So lifting heavy is really important. And anyone listening to this, who is not exercising at all, please do not hear that you have to go sign up for a heavy weight training class tomorrow that is not at all what we’re saying. You walking around the block for the next few weeks could be an app could get get you some games like that. It’s going to be a lovely place to start. You got to meet yourself where you’re at. But over the long term, if you want to continue to progress with battling sarcopenia, which is basically the loss of muscle as we age, we definitely have to increase weight over time progressively to allow that to happen. And I love Gabrielle Lyon forever strong she she’s a physician as well who she specializes in longevity. So she worked a lot of people to age powerfully. But I love when she says that we don’t really have an obesity crisis in our country. We have a lack of muscle crisis. Yeah. And and I just think that is such an awesome pivot. That if you struggle with weight, and again, especially at midlife, right, which is a common complaint for a lot of women traveling through perimenopause and menopause. Strength training again is your friend.

Laini Gray 29:46
Yeah, completely. And I used to joke when I was full time personal training. And I would say here’s the deal. Do you think I don’t think this is dumb to walk into a building and sit in a machine and lift something heavy like that is like that’s kind of a weird con. Sapt Yeah, I mean, think about it doesn’t seem really normal or natural. But I’m like, the alternative is that you need to buy a ranch and start working outside every day and lift hay bales. Like, that’s the difference. Our society has changed. So we no longer lift heavy things on a day to day basis. So like, my dad has never been in a gym that he lifts 100 pound hay bales. Oh my gosh. Yeah, he jumps off the back of the truck into a deep squat jump. Yep. I’m like, at 75. Right.

Courtney Townley 30:30
I love that you’re bringing this up plenty, because I think it was so easily forget that the reason strength training even exists is because of the advent of comfort culture. Like we have become a culture that is sitting so much and never walking, never, like we’re not doing the activities that we would have been doing 100 years ago. And so literally, exercise was born out of a need to combat the demise that was happening because of all of these modern day comforts. Yeah,

Laini Gray 31:00
I just think what you coordinate and you’re dancing, like think about it before we had all of the things that we do for fun now. Yeah, I mean, even 56 years ago, everybody went dancing. You all went dancing, and you did line dancing, you did a couple, you know, like swing dancing, and there was like this. That’s what you did as a community is go out to these. We don’t do that anymore.

Courtney Townley 31:18
No, now we sit in front of screens. Yeah, that’s watching other people have fun and dancing. Yes.

Laini Gray 31:25
It’s crazy, right? And then we’re like, oh, we shouldn’t do that. And then we don’t know.

Courtney Townley 31:29
And then we don’t, it’s so true. So one other thing I want to mention about strength training, because I think it’s just important to Pete, for people to have sort of a lot of fuel for the fire around this is that osteoporosis is also a very real threat, as we age and hormones shift, and we are less mobile. And strength training actually helps us to keep our bones strong, because muscle pulls on bone. And when you’re creating a torque on a bone, that bone has to fortify itself. And so I just think that’s a really helpful reminder for people when they are especially resistant to learn a new skill, like strength training, because let’s be honest, ladies, that’s why a lot of you aren’t doing it, you just have resistance, because you’ve just had never done it, or you haven’t done it long enough to feel comfortable with it. Yeah. And so having I think all of these reasons for doing it can be really compelling.

Laini Gray 32:23
Yeah. And I would just say to that, if we, if we were able to find our purpose, and what we want to be more full on in our life with you think about strength training, this isn’t one of those perfect opportunities to invest in yourself, hire a trainer, or a trainer, can I just tell you like, it’s fun to actually go to the gym and have somebody tell you what to do. You don’t have to do the deciding somebody else can decide for you, you get this feedback, you get the end and the strength gains you and especially if you’re starting out new, the gains that you will have within a month’s time will be incredible. And pretty soon you’re like, oh, consistency, one of Courtney favorite things to talk about my favorite topics, he really works, right. So if you’re afraid of to start, ask someone to help you hire someone to help definitely Hey, give yourself permission to take care of yourself, your children, your siblings, whoever you always take the dance lesson, let’s put you in basketball camp, do the same thing for yourself.

Courtney Townley 33:18
Yeah. And there’s so many benefits to that, right? You have that outside accountability, you’re paying for it. So there’s a financial investment, like you said, you’re removing decision making, because you’re literally hiring someone to do that for you. I mean, there’s just so many benefits, especially when you’re just getting started to have someone help you get that kind of traction. So love that. Let’s talk about nutrition for a minute. Because, again, any one of these topics we could literally talk about for a year, like just strength training, we could have a whole Podcast about it, we can have a whole Podcast about nutrition. So we’re just touching on these things today. But when it comes to powerful aging, one of the things that I see and I sort of help clients work through a lot around nutrition is number one under eating. I’ve never had a woman honestly come to me who was over consuming nutrients like things that actually nourish the human body. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 34:13
Are they over consuming some processed food? Probably. Right. But largely, I see a lot of women under consuming calories and then wondering why they can’t build muscle. They have no energy, they’re not sleeping well at night. They’re always moody. Like there’s a connection. So the under consumption of calories in general, but also massively and under consumption of protein, which I feel like anyone who’s on any kind of social media channel these days, probably that’s always see I see protein everywhere now, which is great. It still doesn’t make it easy to consume because protein is something we have to prepare in advance. It’s not something we can grab off a shelf necessarily, not as easily as a carbohydrate or maybe a you know, a fat source.

Laini Gray 34:55
Yes. Because that’s back to the comfort culture. Yeah, right being comfortable with things But it’s true. We need that. And then to echo Dr. Lyon Gabriella lion, you know, she’s like, we have to have the protein to stimulate our muscle. And muscle is the organ of longevity. If we want to have that full life and have longevity, where we actually enjoy our life as we age, we need to have muscle and protein is the building block of muscle. Right? So we have to be doing that. So one of the things like it is it’s really unfair. It’s really unfair, we get to midlife and we have worked our tail off to get there. And we just want to like, celebrate and just do whatever we want. We just want everything to work. It doesn’t it doesn’t work that way. Like, right. And I think that’s a big struggle too, is you’re like, Okay, we need I don’t want to change. I’ve worked this hard to get here. I want to be able to do whatever I want. Yeah, okay. Well, you can do whatever you want. That’s your choice. But your physiology needs certain things, to optimize your health and to feel and feel and function your best and proteins a big one. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 35:57
we don’t have that youth on our side anymore. We have reserves in the tank, and we can get away with a little bit of you right infliction, like a little insulting to the interior of our body. Our body is not as I would say, not forgiving in a lot of ways. But it’s definitely less forgiving than it was when we were in our 20s and 30s. Yeah, yeah. The other thing I just want to mention, because I know, I don’t want to dismiss the very real struggle that a lot of women are facing with their bodies shifting. And like you said earlier, maybe they’re a little more sensitive to carbohydrate, maybe their their body is no longer tolerating certain foods, because we do develop a lot of sensitivities, and even allergies at midlife. And weight gain is a reality for a lot of people. And one of the hills I will die on is that dieting is not a lifestyle, like dieting is intended to be a tool that you use at the right time for the right purpose. But if you live in a state of calorie deficit, you’re not doing yourself any favors, because the body can’t thrive and grow and do all the things that you’re asking of it.

Courtney Townley 37:09
So if you’re a woman who does have weight to lose, but you also are a woman who is constantly under eating, and you feel like hell, you may need to work your calories up a little bit in order to get to a place where your body can handle a deficit. Because and I say this emphatically because the number of women I’ve worked with over the years who come in and are already only consuming let’s just say 1300 1400 calories a day? Well, yes, we can all argue that weight loss is a byproduct of a calorie deficit. Where am I supposed to take a woman into a calorie deficit? If she’s already at 1400? Calories? Yeah, right. Like, do you take her to 1000? Do you take her below 1000? Who wants to live there? Nobody? Nobody. So I think that the shift for powerful aging around nutrition, in part needs to be around eating for fuel versus eating for constantly losing weight. Yeah,

Laini Gray 38:07
what can completely right. And that’s if we’re already in this kind of state of decline, and we’re trying to maximize how much life we have left. We want to fuel that. So we do have to have that shift. And I will say this just based on personal experience, okay? I did not have a great perimenopause, it was very chaotic. I gained weight, it was a struggle, it really stopped. Like, I’m just going to be honest. And I like to share that because it did it sucked. And here’s me a fitness professional, who knew how to diet and knew how to do the things. And so I was even at the time when all this hit, I was like full on whole 30 lifted heavy doing the things feeling great. It did not matter.

Laini Gray 38:44
And so there were definitely times when mentally I was like, Okay, I’ve got to cut calories. I’ve got to do different things. None of that ever worked. None of that ever worked. It was a long process of having to really dig deep and go, what’s most important, what are the foundations I need to focus on so that I could come out this on the other side? Now on the other side, being in menopause, guess what? Things start to even out again? Yeah, things start to even out. So it’s like hang in there. Hang in there, sis. But we got it. We have to fuel the body so that when you get to the other side, you’re not completely depleted, stressed out exhausted and just don’t even know where to go. Right.

Courtney Townley 39:19
Yeah. And it’s so great that you’re mentioning this because it’s such a downward spiral. When you’re consistently under consuming calories at a time when your body already isn’t tolerating stress. So great. That’s what happens. You lose muscle mass, you lose bone mass, you get super reactive, you don’t sleep, like all the things that we mentioned earlier. It’s like you’re exacerbating a problem. Because we’re buying into that dogma that I’m always supposed to be eating less food. Yeah. And I would just pose the question to anybody listening who’s in that space. Is it working? Is it working? Because if it’s working more power to Yeah, yeah, but for a lot of You listening to this show? I know it’s not working because I work with you. Well, I worked, how many women that are doing that very thing, and it’s just breaking them down. It’s not building them up.

Laini Gray 40:10
And then they end up overeating, right? They want and have that. Okay, well, it’s not working. So I’m gonna eat everything under the sun. Right? And now that just shifts it the other way. And when we talk about hot flashes, not all the things you talked about, are made worse when we have blood sugar instability. Yeah. It’s just everything’s worse. Everything’s things worse. And

Courtney Townley 40:32
that that is a little bit because, because I think that’s this beautifully fits like yes, with the conversation of nutrition, also with the conversation of stress, because blood sugar isn’t just affected by what we eat. It’s affected by every stress in our life. Yeah. Right. Because think about it. Stress tells the brain to be on alert and get ready to fight or flee. In order to be on alert, you got to have sugar in your blood. So if you’re in your if you’re eating a diet of processed foods, and tons of carbohydrate, and you’re living a high stress lifestyle, not an awesome recipe for blood sugar regulation. So talk to us a little bit about blood sugar regulation and why it matters. Because what does it do to the body?

Laini Gray 41:14
Right? So so if we have too much blood sugar running around, right, let’s, we have this really cool hormone called insulin that gets the blood sugar out of the bloodstream. And it’s really good at storing that as fat. It’s really awesome. You get to store it for later. It’s just such a real I mean, I’m pretty good at it. And actually, but here’s the deal. Nobody wants to store extra fat if you don’t have to, right, we have food coming tomorrow. So we really don’t need to have to have this storage up of all this, this fat. But we also don’t need all this blood sugar all the time.

Laini Gray 41:45
So the one thing is, you know, are we eating all these things that are raising our blood sugar? Are we having stress that’s raising our blood sugar? So we could be sitting here and have a major life stressor and the blood sugar pumps up? And then it’s like, where do we go? Where do we go? Is she moving? Oh, she’s not moving. She’s just sitting still. So even by just being stressed out not eating, you can gain weight, because insulin comes in, grabs a blood sugar and says let’s store it away for later. And you hear this on every commercial high cortisol goes into belly fat, right, right. And then, to make matters worse, as our estrogen declines, we become less sensitive to insulin anyway. So we really have this, we have to be as smart as our biochemistry and learn how to work with it.

Laini Gray 42:28
And then one reminder is, we’ve all heard these things to our 20s and 30s. And we should manage our blood sugar. When we get into our 40s. And things are shifting, it’s like, okay, it’s make or break time, we really need to do this, you really need to do this, this is gonna set up the rest of our life and our health. We need to get this figured out.

Courtney Townley 42:48
So quality and quantity of the Food Matters. Yep. And this conversation that I’ve, you know, I’m definitely not an expert in nervous system regulation. And this is why I always have Irene line on the show and all the things. But I will say that the more that I learned about the nervous system, and how much it influences things like blood sugar regulation, it’s just this is just not a conversation we can ignore and think about it. I know for myself entering midlife, like, my energy is always ramping up during the day, it’s like more to do more to think about more and more problems to solve more, all the things. I was never taking time to decompress, like to dip into those places of rest and digest throughout the day.

Courtney Townley 43:31
So what did I do at the end of the day, I would want to eat all my problems. And I also crashed because my system like just forced me to shut down or ever notice I don’t know if you ever noticed this in your life. But I often was going so hard so fast all the time that anytime I took a vacation or have a break from work, I get sick. Yeah. Because it’s like I was giving my body permission to really rest and it was gonna take full advantage of coercing me down. And so if we can learn at midlife, how to better regulate our nervous system, we can forego a lot of unnecessary suffering. Yeah,

Laini Gray 44:09
I mean, to your point. A couple of years ago, I wore my first continuous glucose monitor Yes, to kind of look at blood sugar. And if you think your stress is not there, you need to wear a continuous glucose monitor because you’ll notice spikes in your glucose that have nothing to do with your meal. And not to throw my husband under the bus. But every time I fought with him, my glucose went way high. Right? Or there were days when it was just high all the way across. And those were the days I was sitting in the computer working. I just had things to do. So it’s a really big conversation and that’s the other piece about having a more full life means giving yourself permission to do less. Yes.

Courtney Townley 44:50
If you want to push out we say you got to respect the pole and we are not pulling back enough we are not giving ourselves the grace of the rest and and die. A state in general, which becomes a massive problem. And to your point Laney, too, I think that our culture does such an amazing job of glorifying stress, you know that it’s it’s always about going harder. Women can be all things to all people at all times, like you can have it all. But can you like, can you without really taking a hit on the biochemical level? I would say probably not. And I think a lot of people not I think I think I know from working with a lot of people over the years that we do an awesome job of normalizing stress. So women don’t give themselves permission to rest. And they operate at this really high level, like this high functioning level for a long time, to the point that when you ask them the question on a scale from one to 10, how stressed you feel they’re like, I’m not stressed. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 45:50
But everything else is saying that they are, they’re gaining weight for no reason. They can’t sleep at night, right? They’re breaking out, they’re having hot flashes, like you are stressed. But until you taste the other side, you might not realize how stressed you actually are. So this is where I say body awareness really matters, like our bodies are talking to us constantly. And if you are overriding and ignoring all of those messages, you’re setting yourself up for some really rocky roads ahead.

Laini Gray 46:21
Yeah, it’s the biggest concept, or it’s the most important concept and people don’t, they’re just not ready to hear it. Right. I will work with people, they will do all the testing, they will do all the supplements, they’ll change their diet. But when I say you have to say no to something, they fight against it. And here’s what I will say what changes in midlife? Is that the thing you have to say no to is probably a good thing. That’s the difference when you’re 20 and 30. Say no means don’t go out at night. Don’t go out. Don’t drink? Don’t I mean all these things that were probably not that good for you. When you’re in midlife, say no might be, you’re not going to volunteer at school this week. You’re not going to you know, do something with the church group. You’re not going to go to every single wedding shower, or whatever the case may be. They’re good things. So it’s hard to say, oh, but it’s a good thing. I should do it. Yeah. So that’s the difference. So we have to understand that you’re going to have to say no to things that are good. Well, and

Courtney Townley 47:20
it’s bigger than that it’s you’re going to have to be okay with other people’s discomfort. Yeah, and this is the part that we really rumble with. Because you setting a boundary you saying no you deciding to show up in your life differently, is 150% going to make people around you uncomfortable, because guess what the human brain loves. Certainly, it likes everything to stay the same all the time. And when something disrupts the applecart, it kind of makes our brain freak out, even if it’s to the advantage, like it’s for the health of the other person. And so, I always just remind my clients that we aren’t really willing to change unless we’re willing to be okay with other people getting uncomfortable. Because it’s just the cost. And so you are going to have to reteach some people in your orbit, how you are going to be in your life and how you are going to show up and what to expect and what not to expect. And that feels like a row, which is why I always call it the rumble, right? It’s we really rumble in that space, because of all the thoughts and all the stories and all the assumptions that we’re making. But with the right tools, you can work through it with more grace. And it doesn’t have to be a really horrific process. It can be a really beautiful process

Laini Gray 48:37
completely i The one example I think of when you let’s just look at the dentist, for example, right when you need to make a dental appointment. How many days are they open? We just want to three, like their work three days a week, like it’s the best job in the world, apparently, right? And if you don’t say, Well, will you come in on a Saturday? Yeah, could you take my call tonight, you respect the fact that this is their profession, this is their practice. And these are their boundaries, guess what, you are a professional, awesome woman, you are a professional at that. And you deserve to have boundaries, too. And when you set the boundaries, people will respect them. Your hairdresser doesn’t come in extra for you. You have to plan six weeks in advance, right? Like all of these things, and we respect those boundaries. But why aren’t we setting them for ourselves once we give ourselves that purpose and that I deserve this that permission that you always talk about Courtney and but finding the purpose and this is why Yeah, I deserve boundaries. Yeah. Because then when you come to me inside of those boundaries, you’re gonna get a really good version of me.

Courtney Townley 49:42
That’s gonna be awesome. 100% Yeah, and I’m just gonna do a little shameless plug here because it’s so relevant. But next month inside of Rumble & Rise, our entire topic is on boundaries. We’re talking about Graceville boundary setting and that isn’t just for other people, although we do cover that how to set boundaries with people around you, but How to set boundaries with yourself. Because anyone who wants to age powerfully that believes that they do not have to have any kind of constraint in a world that is constantly delivering you, all of this comfort, opportunity and all of this false pleasure opportunity, you’re lying to yourself.

Courtney Townley 50:18
We all have to practice constraint and it isn’t a It’s not some people think of it as like a cruel thing. Like a, it’s not cruel. It’s an act of self love. No. If you care about yourself, and you care about your well being, you must set limits, not just with other people, but with yourself. So let’s talk about alcohol on that note, because I think it just perfectly segues into it. Yeah, that alcohol has become a way of anesthetizing our life or it’s like the only way people think that they’re fun. Yeah. Right. The number of women who tell me that I can’t not drink because I don’t really like who I am when I don’t drink and I don’t know how to be around other people. I’m like, well, maybe we should address that. Instead of just consuming this thing that is clearly not doing you a ton of favors.

Courtney Townley 51:07
And look, I’ll be straight up. I know you don’t drink, but I do drink. I love whiskey of all things. She was like, I don’t know, Miller Lite or something. But I love good whiskey. My husband loves good whiskey. I used to like wine, but these things really hurt my body. I feel inflammation so fast. It’s not even funny. Like I take a sip of red wine, and I just immediately feel it in my fingers. I definitely feel it everywhere the next day. But I decided I don’t know. And it wasn’t really even like I’m going to stop drinking on this date. But I haven’t had a drink probably in two months. And I wasn’t even a heavy drinker. But all this to say I cannot believe how much better I feel.

Courtney Townley 51:51
And honestly, it’s kind of like before I had kids, like a lot of women who have children will be able to relate to this. That once you have a child you think what the hell did I do with all my time before I had a kid? And I kind of feel this way around alcohol now that I’m not real. Now if I hadn’t been drinking for two months, I think. as tired as I feel at the end of the day, how the hell did I have alcohol in my life? Yeah, right. I still have aches and pains. I still have things I’m rumbling with physically. But how did I do all of that with alcohol? Yeah, anyway. So will you speak to alcohol and why it’s not really a midlife woman’s best friend.

Laini Gray 52:29
Yeah. Well, I mean, let’s just go right out the gate. It is a neurotoxin. Yeah. And I’ll be I’ll there’s no like health benefit to alcohol. It is a toxin in your body. It damages your brain every time you consume it. Yeah, right. Not to mention the physiological effects and affecting your liver and different things like this that affects your estrogen detox for women increases risk of breast cancer, end of story. Alcohol increases your risk of breast cancer, we need to say that more especially during Breast Cancer Awareness, right. So there are a lot of negative consequences to drinking alcohol, but it’s the most widely accepted drug. Right?

Laini Gray 53:06
There’s no There’s no regulations on it. You can drink as much as you want. It’s promoted everywhere. There’s a lot of money in it. And so it’s really hard to kind of choose to go against that. But in midlife I haven’t. I have yet to find any woman that can drink even just on occasion and feel her best. Right? It it messes with the blood sugar makes hot flashes worse. You know, estrogen stuff is worse. There’s this a lot of it’s just not fun. You don’t wake up feeling good. The next day your mood is more unstable. And it’s a hard one for people because it’s been this. I don’t know, just a comfort, if you will, or this once again is that midlife why just want to have a glass of wine at the end of the night. Okay, that’s a choice. That’s a choice, right? We could be good. I don’t know. I’m apparently I’m in the garden season right now. But we could be going out to work in the garden at sunset, you know.

Courtney Townley 54:02
Everything’s about gardening. Now. It’s spraying and

Laini Gray 54:05
sunny outside things. I know. Right? But we’ve chosen to do this. More this more comfortable thing, and it’s not really doing us any benefit or service. But once again, there’s no judgement. Everybody gets to choose how they want to move through this. What are the things they want to keep in their life? What are the things they don’t? Yeah, but I would say this is a time to recreate yourself and make some choices. try some new things out. Try strength training, try eating more protein. Maybe give up alcohol for a couple of months and see how that feels right try on a new trial a few new things new habits, see how that feels and then decide.

Courtney Townley 54:46
Yeah, so good. Okay, I this is so connected to alcohol. And we probably should have started our whole conversation here because I know you and I both believe that this is probably the most important thing, which is sleep and alcohol massively disrupts our sleep cycles. I don’t know a woman who drinks alcohol after the age of 40 and feels like she sleeps like a baby. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they tend not to hire me. So the sleep and our biochemistry is, it’s like, it’s just the linchpin because it’s where I always say it’s where all the magic happens. That’s where all of the repair work. And all of the fortifying happens is when we’re sleeping. And so when we are building or establishing lives that disregard our need for sleep, especially at midlife, we pay a pretty steep price for that. Yeah, four to five and repair. And then we wonder why aging is accelerating? Yeah,

Laini Gray 55:45
I mean, and that’s the thing is people will say, but I drink so that I can wind down. Oh, yeah, now Yeah, right. And so that may be in the in the first part of sleep. But then most of those people are waking up multiple times during the night, because once again, it affects your blood sugar, and then you have a low blood sugar effect. And then you have liver stuff happening in the middle of the night. And it just, it doesn’t serve a great purpose at this stage. Once you have your foundations re established, right, then you can build on and trickle in the things that you want to do for enjoyment or that bring you some joy, but not at the expense of the foundation.

Laini Gray 56:19
If that foundation isn’t set, the rest of you you’re going to crumble, right? Sooner or later, you will crumble. And most of us hang on for a long time. Well, we’ll deal with the wait, we’ll deal with this. And the crumbling comes later. But eventually it comes right, the Body Keeps the Score. And so we’d have to be tuned into that. Because we still have this brain that’s making these choices. And we also have a brain that can do better if we want it to.

Courtney Townley 56:43
And the other thing I remind people of too is like sleep is the one thing that isn’t asking anything of you, it’s just asking you to stop doing, like, go to bed. It doesn’t cost you anything it is like and yet the way we resist it, and I don’t think it’s even resisting it. I think it’s the stories we tell ourselves about what needs to get done. And I haven’t had any alone time. So I’m going to stay up later and just scroll on my phone, whatever it is, and then all of our lifestyle choices we’re making that actually disrupt our chemistry. It’s all of that combined. And the amount of magic I’ve seen happen in women’s lives who just start improving their sleep hygiene is mind boggling.

Laini Gray 57:26
Yeah, I will, I will tell you to, because I wear you know, I wear a woof band that tracks my sleep and things. And it actually gauges you know, how much effort did I put in the day? And how much recovery do I need? Typically, I need more than eight to fully recover from my days. And that’s not a day when I don’t exercise. That’s just the mental emotional stress of working and living life. So when you’re going through it, if you’re hanging on between, you know that five to six hours or maybe seven, you’re still going to be chronically a little bit depleted in that sleep category. And that will add up over time.

Courtney Townley 57:59
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s really important to highlight here that everything that we’ve we’ve talked about today, like because we really talked about the fundamentals, right, we talked about nutrition, we talked about strength training, we even get to the cardio piece, which I think for another conversation, we talked about alcohol, we talked about rest and recovery, and changing your ways around any or all of these things is going to cost you it’s going to cost you time it’s going to cost you energy. And here’s the part we really hate. You’re going to have to make sacrifices, like going to bed at nine o’clock means you are sacrificing something. Right?

Courtney Townley 58:43
Eating more protein means you’re not eating something else. And I think that it’s just always so important to point out that every choice you make has a sacrifice me having alcohol tonight, I’m going to have a sacrifice. Yeah, me going to bed at eight o’clock. I’m going to have a sacrifice. But the trade offs are radically different. Yeah, right. The trade off for the alcohol tomorrow is I’m not going to want to go work out in the morning, I’m going to be reactive, I’m going to feel inflamed and I’d be pissed at myself. Right?

Courtney Townley 59:13
I’m gonna be that integrity, pain. Yeah, but if I put myself to bed at nine o’clock tonight, even though I’m sacrificing another Netflix show, or maybe even a conversation with my husband, because that sometimes happens. Yeah, the trade off is I’m gonna wake up and feel good, which is gonna make everyone around me happier because I really am so much more pleasant to be around when I have had a good night’s sleep. So I think it’s just reminding ourselves to think in that way. Like you’re never avoiding a sacrifice ever. No, not deluding yourself into thinking you are. There’s always a sacrifice. It’s just which one do you want? Do you want the one that actually makes you feel worse? Or do you want the one that’s actually going to help you feel better?

Laini Gray 59:53
Yes, well said well said. So

Courtney Townley 59:55
I feel like there probably needs to be a part two to this because there’s a whole realm of times topics that we didn’t really get to with biochemistry, which is time outside and nature and so many other things connection to other humans. Yeah, but for the purposes of this show, and also to respect the listeners time, we’re at an hour. So I think we’re gonna wrap it up here. And don’t worry, you will be seeing and hearing much more from Laney. But I hope this was helpful. I hope this was helpful to anyone listening in terms of just getting back to basics. And having a little bit more, like I said earlier fuel for the fire on why these things are so important, especially as our hormones are shifting and our biochemistry is changing. Is there anything else you want to say, to wrap up this powerful aging conversation? I

Laini Gray 1:00:42
kind of would just echo what you’re saying is that, you know, we we grew up knowing these foundations, we knew they were important, and the life got in the way and we were handling things well. And we get to this place where things start to feel a lot chaotic. And we start to chase after the magic pill and the magic program and all these things to meet our chaos. But the reality is, it’s going back to the foundations. Yeah. And really doing them well is going to serve us, you know, now and throughout our lives so that we have this graceful aging that we can enjoy. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 1:01:13
And you and I talk about this a lot. But it’s like, the things that we’re talking about on the show, not only are they so powerful, and these are the things that research tells us time and time again seem to work, right. But they also tend to be a low investment. I mean, yes, time and energy wise, they are an investment. Absolutely. But financially, this these things don’t have to be a huge investment, I would say the food piece, nutrition tends to be obviously an investment that none of us can avoid and the prices of groceries, oh my gosh, we could do a whole Podcast about that. So I’m not saying that nutritious food does not cost you I know it does. But strength training does not need to be in a gym, it can be in the comfort of your own home, you don’t even have to have a weight equipment, per se. There’s lots of things that you could use to lift to lift heavy sleep costs you nothing in terms of financially hydration, which we didn’t even get to but not drinking alcohol, that’s gonna save some serious cash. Right. So yeah, I think it’s just important to remember that we are because we are living in this world of just constantly being sold so many things. And the reality is most of what you need. You already have.

Laini Gray 1:02:26
It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. Once again, quit looking outside of ourselves, come back and get in touch with who we are. We have all the answers, right? Yeah, we have to find that joy, find that purpose and realize we can do it, we can do it, we just have to remember.

Courtney Townley 1:02:42
Yeah. And on that note, the last, the final piece of this series, which I will do in two weeks, is all about reinvention and self expression in the second half of our life, because that shifts a lot. And I think that there’s an itch to shift. But a lot of women are so afraid of pursuing that calling and what they’re feeling in their bones. So I just feel like that’s a really important conversation to wrap up this whole series. So yeah, thanks for being here. My friend. I saw you. Great conversation. I

Laini Gray 1:03:13
love it.

Courtney Townley 1:03:14
Thank you so much for taking the time to tune into the Grace & Grit Podcast today. If you like what you heard on the show, I want to let you know about a free masterclass that I’m offering later this month called Women’s Health Reimagined. You know, never before have women had access to so much information about health and wellbeing, or spent so much money trying to move their health and happiness to higher ground. I mean, quite literally, the global wellness market in 2023 was estimated to be $5.6 trillion. And women are more deceased than ever, physically, mentally and emotionally. So clearly the pathways that we’re being sold to improve our health and well being aren’t working so well. So it’s time for a better path. And this class is going to introduce you to one such path, a path that puts you in the driver’s seat, a path that evolves as you do a path that helps you to step fully into your power cell to soul. All you have to do to get yourself registered is head on over to graceandgrit.com/reimagine. Again, that’s graceandgrit.com/reimagine. This class is totally free and we’re offering it on three different dates at three different times. So I’ll see you there.

Courtney Townley 1:04:37
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.