368: The Two-Step Formula for Midlife Health Mastery

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Courtney Townley 0:01
If you are a midlife woman who is feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of information coming at you in terms of all the things you could or should be doing to improve your health and well being, you have come to the right place. This podcast today is for you.

Courtney Townley 0:17
This is going to sound like a big promise, but in today’s episode, I am going to break down the midlife health equation into just two simple parts. That’s right, two simple parts.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Now, simple is not always easy, so I am going to take this a little bit further and teach you some very specific steps you can take to implement this equation into your own life. So if that sounds like it would be useful to you, stick around, because that’s where we’re headed.

Courtney Townley 0:45
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 1:13
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast. I’m your host, Courtney Townley, and for the past 25 years, I have been helping midlife women all over the world take better care of themselves with more consistency and ease. And in today’s episode, we are diving into The Two-Step Formula for Midlife Health Mastery.

Courtney Townley 1:33
You know, throughout my career in health and wellness, I have witnessed countless women navigating the hormonal roller coaster that is midlife, and I have witnessed some women travel through it pretty seamlessly, and other women kind of travel through it more like a tsunami. And in my early years of my career, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I assumed that the women who were traveling less gracefully really just needed to focus more on diet and exercise, because that was the limitation of my education. I only knew about diet and exercise.

Courtney Townley 2:16
But of course, as I evolved as a wellness practitioner and I got more education, and I matured in my career, I really came to realize that there are so many elements at play during midlife that can introduce unnecessary stress into our lives. And the good news is there are also a lot of things that we can do, practices that we can adopt to help expand our capacity to tolerate stress. And this conversation about stress really matters to our health, especially at midlife, for three primary reasons.

Courtney Townley 3:04
Number one, managing your total stress load at really any age and stage of life is the linchpin to health, cell to soul. It is the key factor to helping us improve our health. But number two, biochemically, we aren’t as equipped to manage stress at midlife in the way that we once were. And what I’m namely speaking to is, course, is the decline in hormones like estrogen and progesterone that start to decline at midlife, that make us less able to counter things like cortisol in our system, and thirdly, excessive stress over long periods of time without the hormones on board to help us manage that stress can lead to a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering. So what’s a woman to do? Right?

Courtney Townley 4:05
Well, I would say the best thing a woman can do at midlife is to learn how to manage her stress effectively. And this is not about just signing up for a new diet program or a new exercise program. So let’s talk a little bit about understanding stress management. There is a common misconception that stress management means eradicating stress entirely from your life. That is not the conversation I want to have here. A stress free life is a life without growth. In fact, certain kinds of stress are crucial to your health and well being intentional stress, like strength training. Right

Courtney Townley 4:55
Muscle grows when it is intentionally stressed. Bones become denser, neural connections in the brain are strengthened. Even your immune system gets a boost from short bursts of stress. This is because the right kind of stress in the right dose at the right time actually amplifies cellular integrity. It makes your cells healthier and more able to do the work they need to do to support you. And there’s actually a name for this stress.

Courtney Townley 5:33
If you’re a longtime listener of the show, you have heard me mention this many times. It’s called you stress. You stress is what I like to refer to as on purpose stress. It is the kind of stress that we pursue to become happier and healthier humans on purpose. So think about starting your dream job, lifting weights, learning a new language, setting boundaries, or even having difficult conversations, all of these things can create positive, healthy stress that expands your well being.

Courtney Townley 6:14
On the other hand, we certainly have distress, the unnecessary stress that wreaks havoc on your health and your life. So some examples of this would be like poor time management, eating nutrient void foods, so foods that don’t have much nutrition to them, sleep deprivation, negative self talk, or maybe constantly worrying about worst case scenarios. None of those things are actually benefiting your life on the other side, and I’m sure you know this type of stress all too well, because I see a lot of people drowning in this type of stress. So ultimately, what really matters for your health is the total stress load that you are carrying at any given time, otherwise known as your allostatic load.

Courtney Townley 7:09
And this refers to the culmination of all the wear and tear that chronic stress puts on both your mental, physical and emotional health. So it’s really time that we ditch this really old equation that honestly never works that well of less food and more exercise to improve the health of a woman, especially at midlife, this formula has led to so much burnout and frustration for way too long. So what is the new equation that I’m referring to? This simple, two part equation that I alluded to at the start of this podcast? Well, it’s really simple, and I’m going to repeat it because I want you to really sear this on your brain, because it is a game changing formula. Midlife Health Mastery really boils down to to these two things, number one, remove unnecessary stressors from your life, and number two, expand your capacity to tolerate stress.

Courtney Townley 8:21
Like I said, I’m going to repeat that so you sear it on your brain. The two part process to midlife Health Mastery and really life. Health Mastery, regardless of your age, is number one, removing unnecessary stress from your life, and number two, expanding your capacity to tolerate stress, one without the other, will not create health. So let’s talk about these two so we’re really clear on what these two categories are.

Courtney Townley 8:54
Number one, removing the unnecessary stress. What exactly is unnecessary stress? Well, I would say that it’s any stress that breaks you down unnecessarily. There’s no benefit on the other side, the distress of your life. Some examples. This is not exhaustive list, just some examples. Like I said before, a nutrient void diet so not having much nutrition in your diet, too much or too little exercise, lack of adequate rest and recovery, dehydration, poor boundaries or lack of communication skills, ignoring or avoiding your emotional landscape, having really negative self narrative, having too few hormones on board an especially relevant thing in the age of HRT, right?

Courtney Townley 9:51
HRT is becoming a much bigger conversation now that we’ve debunked a lot of misunderstanding of HRT. D taking on too much too fast in order to change your life in some way, can absolutely be distressing. Unresolved trauma can absolutely be distressing. So removing or reducing these kinds of stressors will go a long way in helping you to restore your health, quite literally sell to soul. So what do we mean by the second part of that equation, expanding your capacity for stress?

Courtney Townley 10:33
Well, this what we’re talking about is building practices that fortify and basically make you stronger. They fortify you and they make you stronger.

Courtney Townley 10:46
So some ways to build this kind of capacity include, like I mentioned earlier, strength training, leaning into the discomfort of doing things differently, like planning your day, or learning to say no, developing new skills like emotional regulation or parenting your brain, as I like to call it, practicing nervous system regulation like breath work or meditation can actually be a little challenging, right, uncomfortable in and of itself, but we do it to expand our ability to be with stress. It’s not the only reason we do it. It’s just one of many benefits engaging in activities that help to lower unnecessary stress and build resilience so they feed each other, right?

Courtney Townley 11:44
The things that help us to expand our capacity for stress also help us to reduce unnecessary stressors, and the opposite is also true. As we reduce unnecessary stressors in our life, we also expand our capacity to tolerate stress because we have more resources on board. So how do we actually put this very simplified two part formula into practice? Because, of course, it’s incredibly nuanced. So I just want to give you some things to consider to help you implement this in your own life.

Courtney Townley 12:25
Number one, it is a very powerful practice for you to start identifying unnecessary stressors in your own life. So what I encourage my own students and clients to do is to really consider all of the things that impact your health story in your life. So this is certainly your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health, your relationship health, the Environmental Health in which you’re inserting yourself most of the time during the day. Where are the unnecessary stressors in those areas? And then we also want to take some time to identify practices that we can start implementing that will expand our capacity for stress. So what activities do you do to help you fortify your resilience?

Courtney Townley 13:27
And you may not have any practices right now, there’s no shame in that. Do not beat yourself up about that. We’re just acknowledging that. And if you are someone who doesn’t have practices right now that help to make you more resilient? What a great thing to know, because that’s an easy fix. We can insert some practices to help you expand your capacity to tolerate stress. This could be anything from lifting weights to learning better time management skills to for some people, practicing meditation or learning how to journal. There’s all kinds of ways that you can enter this, these waters, and then once you’ve done these two things, so again, you’ve identified unnecessary stressors in your life, and you’ve also identified practices that you could implement to expand your capacity for stress, you got to pick something to focus on, like pick an area to focus on first.

Courtney Townley 14:27
You can’t focus on all the things at once. You could try, but it’s a recipe for disaster. You will overwhelm your brain, and an overwhelmed brain will just say, I’m not doing anything. So choose something from either part of the equation either of those two categories we just talked about, whether it’s removing a stressor from your life or building capacity to handle stress. Be very clear on what you are going to focus on. And there’s no right answer here. I know that we are conditioned to believe. It has to be about diet and exercise. That’s not true.

Courtney Townley 15:04
Removing any stressor from your life will improve your health. Expanding your capacity to tolerate stress in any way will improve your health and well being so think bigger than diet and exercise. What is that one thing going to be for you? I will tell you something that can be really helpful. Here is, I do try to encourage my clients to focus on something to start rather than something to stop. So rather than telling yourself, you know what, I’m not going to eat sugar anymore, you could lean into the practice of, I’m not going to buy sugar to have in the house, and I’m going to up level my consumption of things like fruits and vegetables to help satiate me and kind of curb The craving for sugar.

Courtney Townley 16:01
Here’s why I think this is powerful. When you focus on what you’re going to start rather than what you’re going to stop, there’s a little bit less resistance. Because when we tell ourselves we can’t do something, the inner toddler comes out full force and we just want to do the thing all the more. And when we focus on what we are going to start naturally, we’re going to stop doing so much of the thing that we didn’t want to be doing so much of in the first place.

Courtney Townley 16:36
The other thing I would say is really important here is once you have a focus, you have to mind the dose. So is your commitment too big? And you’re going to know if it’s too big if you have fierce resistance to doing it. So if you make a commitment to starting, I’m going to start walking for an hour every single day. Well, that sounds great, because that could definitely improve your capacity to tolerate stress. But an hour every day if you haven’t even been walking for 10 or 20 minutes is a huge commitment.

Courtney Townley 17:14
So based on where you are right now, what actually makes sense if you’ve only been walking for 10 minutes, maybe you just add another 10. If you haven’t been walking at all, maybe you just commit to walking around the block a few times. I know that seems overly simplified, like, Oh, come on, Courtney, I can do so much more than that. Well, prove it to yourself. Prove to yourself that you can keep a small commitment before you start ramping up the commitment, because we want you to win. Winning feels good, and you are going to want to do more of what makes you feel like you’re winning.

Courtney Townley 17:52
The other thing I would say is give it time, whatever you commit to in terms of removing unnecessary stress or expanding your capacity to tolerate stress. Give it time like commit to the practice of whatever the thing is, and give it a solid week or two before you judge it. Because, man, we are so quick to judge. And when we judge, we typically throw in the towel way too soon, and then we just jump to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and all the while building the storyline that nothing works. Well, it’s not true that nothing works.

Courtney Townley 18:29
What’s more true is you’re not sticking with anything long enough to actually find evidence that it works. So give yourself a week or two of practicing, experimenting, implementing, before you judge it, and then we rinse and repeat. We pick something else that helps to remove stress or expands our capacity for stress. And once we build some proficiency with that, we rinse and repeat, and we rinse and repeat, and we keep stacking in. And what ultimately happens is, as you start removing more and more unnecessary stressors, and you start adding in more practices that expand your capacity to tolerate stress, notice how you feel, you will consistently feel better and better.

Courtney Townley 19:21
Your cells will perform better. You will have more energy. You will sleep better at night. You will probably have a hell of a lot more motivation to eat well and exercise. But you don’t have to start there, and I think that’s really important to hear. We always talk about the health equation as if the only entry points are diet and exercise. And it’s absolutely not true, and that’s why I love reminding my community that really this is the equation we need to be focusing on removing unnecessary stressors and implementing practices that simultaneous. Continuously expand our capacity to tolerate stress, and those two things can look like a million different things, not just diet and exercise.

Courtney Townley 20:10
All right, my friends, I hope that was helpful. Thank you for tuning into the grace and grit podcast. If you found today’s episode useful, don’t forget to like and subscribe and share with a few fellow midlife women who might benefit from learning how to manage their stress more effectively.

Courtney Townley 20:27
Remember, your health journey is not a destination. It is a lifelong process, and every step that you make towards reducing unnecessary stress and also expanding your capacity to tolerate it is a step in the right direction. So until next time, take care of yourself, and I will see you very soon.

Courtney Townley 20:55
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.