The Relentless Pursuit Podcast

Today we sit down with bestselling author Danielle Walker and discuss the impacts of food on our bodies, long term health goals and health crises, and the important balance that couples strike to support one another at their highest and lowest moments.

As she struggled with an autoimmune disease, Danielle discovered beautiful ways to radically alter what and how she ate. She has pioneered a rich set of recipes that offer delicious alternatives to the Standard American Diet, helping millions of people improve their health and overall wellbeing.

We enjoyed our conversation with Danielle and learned so much from her! We strongly encourage you to pick up her memoir Food Saved Me, and to grab one of her cookbooks or check out her website where you can find more recipes.

Danielle Walker is an entrepreneur, mother, and 4x New York Times bestselling cookbook author (Against All Grain, Meals Made Simple, Celebrations, Eat What You Love, Food Saved Me, Healthy in a Hurry). She was featured on the coveted Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2015 and has sold over 1 million copies of her cookbooks.

For more information, please visit: https://daniellewalker.com/

Follow Danielle on Instagram: @daniellewalker

The "first place" is your home. Your "second place" is your work. And your "third place" is where you go when you're escaping the pressures of the first two places. Unfortunately, our "third place" is disappearing from many of our lives. What's your Third Place?

IfThe Relentless Pursuit Podcastis about anything, it's about the importance of conversation with those significant in your life (namely, your spouse). But regular, quality conversation does not happen by itself. In this episode, we offer a few core principles we believe about conversation, and some general guidelines we try to remind ourselves of to make sure that quality conversation happens.

Even though it seems like we have a lot that makes us feel happy, accomplished, and focused...we often find ourselves asking, "What are we even doing with our lives?"

This, as it turns out, isn't so uncommon. In this conversation we discuss why even when things seem to look good on paper, our feelings of satisfaction and contentment don't always match up. And sometimes - even though it feels like on the surface we "have it all together - we still wonder if we're doing any of it right after all.

We can often be surprisingly bad at relaxing. Why is that, and what can we do - especially around the holidays - to make sure we're prioritizing what recharges and fulfills us?

This week we focus on how to come to be a better understanding of what it truly means to relax, and to delve deep into this fine and overlooked art.

This time of year around the holidays can make us feel obligated instead of excited, and stressed instead of satisfied. Today we talk about intentionally refocusing on the true holiday magic, establishing limits and boundaries when it comes to traditions, and making sure our good old fashioned values remain centerstage during the winter season.

This week we look at the biggest struggles challenging modern men, from the education system to the job market, to the morphing definitions of fatherhood and masculinity, to the double standards for emotional expression.

This modern era brings modern challenges to women, particularly in the areas of family roles and expectations, body image, and barriers in work, politics, and social issues.

Women have come a tremendously long way in terms of our rights, opportunities, and influence. Yet there is still seem to be struggles and barriers that stand in our way.

In this week's episode, we discuss several aras where we see and experience this. First, we look at the new challenges that have arisen for women due to their increased education and professional opportunitieis. On the one hand, it's phenomenal to have unprecendented opportunites to get out of traditional household roles and make a way for ourselves in the world. On the other hand, those traditional responsibilities related to childcare and household work still fall largely on women's shoulders, adding stress and remolding what family dynamics need to look like. And now that women have much more choice in what they do...what do they want to do?

Women also struggle with their relationship to their bodies. The female body has always been the subject of reverence and scrutiny, but the addition of limitless cameras in our culture has made us hyperaware of our own bodies and the bodies of other women - namely the bodies of glorified social media women who implicitly set an unreachable standard for most of us. Yet we can't seem to look away from ourselves or from them.

And finally we re-examine the perennial problems of representation, career advancement, and social issues - those stubborn problems that, despite us feeling like we've come so far, still seem to show us how far we have to go.

How many minutes of your day are just quiet? Without distractions - without noise - even without productivity? If you're like most of us, silence is RARE. But the truth is that silence is also GOLDEN.

In this episode we spend talk about the value and the rarity of silence. In today's era of devices, work, and havoc, we have no shortage of noise. But we might also realize that the sound of our own thinking - the sound that we can only hear when the rest of the environment is quiet - is something we must intentionally seek.

Today we are excited to bring you a conversation with Casey and Meygan Caston, the couple behind Marriage 365, an incredible resource of tools and coaching for every marriage.

Casey and Meygan’s story is one of a marriage on the verge of divorce to becoming a strong and stable beacon for so many other couples. After investing so heavily into their own marriage, they knew they had developed the tools and techniques for success as a couple and wanted to share them with others, leading them to create Marriage365. This is an incredible resource you’ll hear us talk more about, that includes books, questions, coaching, an app, lots of stories and strategies, and courses.

One of the things they focus on and you’ll hear them address is how making a better you can help make a better marriage.

Other things we talk about include:

• modern marriage challenges
• why divorces happen
• how to schedule your lives (including sex)
• not settling for an “average” marriage
• spousal “business” meetings
• budgeting and household management
• the impact of children
• the influence of social media and modern culture
• how to talk about hard things
• marital coaching vs therapy
• unpopular opinions about marriage

They are a truly engaging and animated couple with a lot of wisdom. We learned a lot from them in a short time, and we hope you do as well. One of those couples we could easily spend hours with and not realize it. After you’re done listening we hope you check about Marriage365.com or find them on Instagram, Facebook, X, or Youtube.