Grace & Grit Podcast

Human biology is an amazing thing in that it is equipped to deal with stress in small doses. The problem is, we are dumping way too much stress on our poor little bodies in this day and age, largely due to lifestyle choices. The Grace & Grit podcast is fast approaching the 100th episode and while we have discussed mental, emotional and physical stress intensely, I have only had a few guests on the show to dish out tips on managing environmental and chemical stress. So, I am thrilled to have Tonya Harris on the show today. Tonya Harris is Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition® and graduated from Hawthorn University with a Master of Science in Holistic Nutrition. Today one of the primary focuses of Tonya’s work is to educate people (parents in particular) on how easy it can be to have a safer, more non-toxic home through safer brands to buy, how to read product labels for hidden toxins, and how to do it on a budget. She does this through working with clients both individually and through the online program she created, “The Healthy Home Project.” She has been writing about the health implications of common chemicals in our homes and their effects on our children since 2008, and now blogs on her website at Healthy Home, Happy Family.

A LOT of women come to work with me b/c they want to lose weight, and weight loss can be a powerful initial motivator but it often isn’t weighty enough to carry people into long-term health. So I often ask my clients, WHY do you want to lose weight, and what lies underneath is typically something that speaks to them wanting to live a bigger life. They want more confidence, they want to move more freely, they want more self-respect etc. So you can see that just having a goal of becoming smaller can feel at odds with living bigger. Well, my guest today, Kourtney Thomas, whose mantra is “Big Arms, Big Life” has a knack for helping women reconcile this type of conflict. In prepping for this interview, I read the following excerpt on Kourtney’s website, which made me all the more excited to interview her today: “I played small, I stayed small. Eventually, I experimented with embracing bigness physically, and that led to the ability to create a bigger life than I ever imagined. While I did work through what it felt like to take up more physical space, my mindset changed right along with my body, what I really learned was that building big arms was always about more. It’s not just about the arms, and it never was. It’s about exploring the possibilities. Shedding old stories, and writing new ones. Bigger muscles, absolutely. But really, bigger choices, and bigger voices.”

I am entering launch mode for my Signature Program, which basically means, according to online entrepreneurial standards, I should be selling myself and telling you all of the reasons WHY you should invest in working with me. The truth is, however, as much as I want people to be interested in the work that I do, I also want to be sure the people I invest in for the next year of my life are a good match for the level of work that I teach. There was a time in my career, I would have worked like a maniac to convince nearly everyone I encountered that I was the perfect person to usher them towards greater health. Now that I am older and slightly wiser, I realize, I am NOT the right person to help all people and not everyone is ready for the work I do AND… That is ok! I invest a tremendous amount of time and energy into my clients, so it is really important that we are a good match for doing great work together. I believe one of the best ways to begin that process, is to tell potential clients why they might NOT want to hire me. So, if after reviewing this list of NOTs with me (which are filled with great tips too), you are more excited than terrified, then, of course, I encourage you to take the next step.

It is all too easy to lose traction with our health around the holidays. Often women are doing more on less sleep and compromising their own self-care to bring everyone else holiday joy. It is no mystery why so many women tumble into the New Year a hot frustrated mess. If you want to get through the holidays this year without sacrificing your health (or your sanity), give this podcast a listen.

I have been a fan of Nia Shank’s for a very long time and she has been a champion among an army of women who’s message inspires the work that I do as a health coach, trainer and host of this podcast. If you go to Nia’s website, and I strongly suggest you do, you will see that she introduces herself as a coach and a writer who shares health and fitness information that doesn’t suck. Not only does the information she deliver not suck, it is helpful, real and goes against the grain of what the mainstream diet and fitness industry are feeding women. And frankly, I think we need a lot more of the type of information that Nia delivers in the world.

Life is full of uncertainties, but a few things you can be certain you will face in your lifetime, and one of them is adversity. No one gets through life without facing challenges, and HOW we choose to face those challenges has everything to do with the quality of life we will live. Adversity shapes us, for better or for worse. My guest on the Grace & Grit podcast today, Alexandra Franzen, just authored an entire book on the subject of adversity and how to rise above the disappointment of things not playing out in the way that we expected. Alexandra and I covered a lot of ground in this interview, including: how to persevere, why awareness & honesty are so necessary for success, how to stay focused while living in a world of distraction, the power of morning routines and how self-care feeds creativity. This is an episode not to be missed.

Now, typically when I schedule podcast interviews, I schedule them based on when my schedule aligns with the schedules of the guest I want to host. There is really no method behind how the podcasts are organized, which makes it extra special when I am able to host a guest like Jenny Carr to discuss inflammation and then immediately host my guest today, Kristen Boehmer, who has an incredible story of triumph in managing a serious disease via diet and lifestyle after medications and surgeries failed her. Kristen Boehmer is the founder and creator of Living Loving Paleo, and from her own experience, is a true believer that food can be a powerful medicine. Tune into this episode for a serious hit of inspiration.

Halloween is now over (I am sure I am not the only mother out there whispering “thank god” under her breath). I love a lot of the traditions of Halloween but the sheer volume of candy involved in the holiday drives me crazy! I went trick-or-treating for all of 25 minutes with my son and, in that short time; he must have collected several pounds of candy. Ugh! Sugar makes things taste good, but as far as good qualities sugar provides, it ends there. I really try hard not to label foods “bad” but in the case of sugar it is really hard not to, because of all of the inflammation it creates in the human body. Chronic inflammation has been linked to nearly EVERY dis-ease known to man. Our bodies have a lot of stressors to contend with on any given day; there are lots of reasons for our system to get inflamed outside of the food choices we are making. So, we aren’t doing our body any favors when we ingest things that cause even MORE inflammation. Inflammation is a very important topic that I have addressed on this podcast many times, and it is a topic I have every intention on continuing to talk about. Today’s guest, Jenny Carr, is a health coach who specializes in the topic of inflammation, has been on the podcast before to speak with us about this topic. Jenny just authored her first book, called Peace of Cake: The Secret to an Anti-Inflammatory Diet, so I begged her to come back to share some more of her wisdom with you! And low and behold, she said yes!

I know I sound like a broken record when I say that if you want to improve your health, you are going to have to create time to improve your health. Many health issues I see women struggling with are a result of women having gigantic expectations and poor time management. You may very well be someone who schedules your days; you might have an awesome planner and the perfect pen to hash out your to do’s. When I say poor time management, I don’t mean that women aren’t making an effort to schedule their days. What I see is women creating schedules that are often misaligned with their values and jam-packed with outrageous expectations for what any one human can accomplish in a day. I also see so much focus on DOING, that RESTORING is often neglected, which, as you well know if you are an avid listener of this podcast, is a recipe for a lot of dis-ease in the human body. So, knowing how much women struggle to organize their time to create a level 10 life, I asked my friend and productivity expert, Amber De La Garza, to come on the show and talk about time management and to give us some simple tips for creating realistic schedules that are in line with our life goals and still leave room for the important stuff like rest and play.

Simplicity, in my opinion, is a topic we cannot talk about enough because we are living in a time that is everything but simple. Building the skill of living more simply isn’t sexy (just as most of the things that will truly improve our health are not). It forces us to slow down, become aware and make conscious choices and it is easy to rationalize not having time for that in a world that pushes more is better and hustle as the only ways to be successful. You are listening to this podcast because there is something you want for your health that you don’t currently have. I don’t sugarcoat, so here is the truth, if you want to up-level any area of your life, you are going to have to make room in your life to do that and most people I know are living with too much stuff to manage and too little time. Which, ultimately, is a recipe for breakdown and dis-ease, not a recipe for health & happiness. And look… I get it, simplifying your life can feel really complicated and hard and overwhelming, which is why I am SO grateful there are people in the world like my guest today, Courtney Carver, who has a knack for showing people how to be more with less.

I have long wanted to do a podcast episode dedicated to the topic of Money. “But Courtney, this is a podcast about women’s health” Yeah, I know…hear me out. I firmly believe that money IS very much a women’s health topic. Money is linked to nearly every aspect of our health because at the end of the day money provides us with choice and choice grants us freedom; The freedom to choose our health care providers, The freedom to choose a way of life that is in line with our values, The freedom to honor our body’s need to rest and restore regularly, The freedom to choose work that feeds our soul. I encounter women nearly every single day, who struggled to reclaim their health because: They feel they have to work 60-80 hour work weeks… because of money. They can’t afford the level of health care they need to address the underlying cause of dis-ease in their body… because of money. They can’t afford to take time off despite feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and absolutely depleted… because of money. They stay in jobs and relationships that are literally robbing them of their life force… because of money. For all of these reasons, and many more, it was really important to me to do a podcast episode dedicated to empowering our relationship with money. Personally, there was a time in my life, I couldn’t really talk about money because it induced so much stress, but avoiding it, I knew was not going to improve my relationship with it. And so, I started to do some research, which leads me to guest today, Bari Tessler Linden.

For years women have sought me out to help them improve their health, and often they come expecting a list of “what” they should be doing (via specific meal plans, calorie loads, foods to avoid etc.). They are often surprised when I ask them to start questioning HOW they might need to show up differently for themselves to elicit a different response. How you greet the day is just as important as what you plan on doing in the day. How you eat is just as impactful to your health as what you eat. How you move is just as important as what modality you choose to up-level your physicality. HOW should proceed the WHAT, because how you do anything has everything to do with the impact “the what” will have in the long term.

I have had several guests on the show to discuss the power hormones have in the health equation because honestly, I do not think this is a topic we can discuss enough. Hormones influence and govern everything about our physiology: weight fertility, mood, energy, sleep and sex drive…just to name a few things. And their disruption can cause havoc on our tissues, our systems and ultimately our sanity. While there may be a time and place for pharmaceutical intervention to help balance extreme hormone challenges, there are a lot of ways to balance our hormones naturally, which are often overlooked. So today, I have invited to the show, Madeline MacKinnon the founder of Natural Hormone Healing to give us some insight into the wild world of hormones and how to create a state of hormonal bliss.

Exercise inspires a host of emotions in people including: fear, dread, resistance and frustration. It is a shame that something that has been proven time and time again to be so good for us, can feel like such a hardship at times. If you have every struggled to stay consistent with your exercise program, you are not alone. Everyone struggles at some point. So, in this episode of the Grace & Grit podcast I deliver my best tips for staying the course, even if you don’t feel like it (because to be honest, there will be many days you won’t feel like it). Enjoy and please share it with the women in your life who you feel might benefit from listening too!

“Cheat meals” and “cheat days” are an integral part of the diet culture vocabulary. And while many people could argue that it is just “semantics” and, therefore, no big deal… I beg to differ. Cheating implies dysfunction and deep health is not born out of dysfunction (not by a long shot). If you have every found yourself in a position of trying to make amends with food choices that aren’t necessarily in line with what you say you want for your health, check out this episode of the Grace & Grit podcast for tips and tricks that can help you rework the “cheat meal” mentality.