Live better and longer with the Fitness Show, hosted by fitness expert, author, and TV personality Fitz Kohler. She'll tell you why diets are dumb, supplements are snake oil, and the truth about how you can earn a lean, hard, pain-free, and athletic body. Now for our favorite bossy blonde, Fitz Kohler. Well, hi team. I'm Fitz Kohler. You're very strong. Fitness pro from fitness.com and welcome to the fitness show and happy freaking new year 2025. That has a really nice ring to it, doesn't it?
It's not one of those weird years like 2017 and I don't know, it's round, right? 2025, it just feels like it's going to be a big, fantastic year. I'm very hopeful. I'm excited about my country. I'm excited about my my posse, my people, my listeners, my races, all my speaking engagements, my family, my dogs, all the things I am excited about and always just grateful to be here. Always so grateful. I hope you wake up every single day grateful because life is good even when it's hard.
And sometimes it's the really hard times that make the rest of life really, really good. But the theme of my show today is not gratefulness. No, even though you should be grateful and we should focus on that daily. My theme is strength. This is your era of strength. And in fact, I want it to be your era of strength. Now, here's the deal. You get to make your own damn choices about who you are and who you want to be, right?
But then I have this vision for you. And my vision is always, you know, how do I help them live better, live longer? And these are things I wish they would do because I care so much about them. And I know if they took on certain challenges or certain mindsets, certain behavioral practices, that they would be so much happier, so much healthier. So yeah, I'm kind of bossing you around, but you get to make the ultimate choice. But do what I say, damn it.
That's right. Do what I say. I know you're probably not listening to me if you could give a rat's ass of what I say, right? You probably say, Fitz Kohler, what's on her mind? I'm going to turn on the fitness show and hopefully she has something productive to share and I can use that. Right. And so I'm trying to give you the golden nuggets. In fact, when I go to a conference of any sort of professional conference. You know, sometimes you're going to hear a lot of redundancy.
Oh, I already know that. I know that this speaker is boring, blah, blah, blah. But then there's that one person who shares that one golden nugget. And I walk out of there thinking, hmm, I'm glad I showed up today because I can use that one bit of advice, that one bit of knowledge to make my life, my business, my family better. And so hopefully we'll get some of that today. But you know, Taylor Swift, she was the big deal in 2024.
In fact, she's been a pretty big deal for a long time. But she had her eras tore and everyone's choosing this era, that era. I'm choosing strength. This is your era of strength. And strength in so many different ways, which we're going to cover today. But yeah, let's make the best of 2025. And we'll be right back. Did you know that wearing compression gear can improve circulation, reduce inflammation, and speed recovery?
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who thinks if I got to do something, I should just do it. right? I don't need to wait for January 1st to start behaving better or doing better or whatever the goal is, right? However, I actually do have a goal. I don't know if it's a resolution, but my eye is on the prize. I'm working on my fifth book and it's a health and fitness book for the masses.
You know, my first book was the Everything Flat Belly Cookbook and that was published by Adams Media, I think in 2010 or 2007, something like that. And that was great. That book was fantastic. And then recently I've published the Cancer Comeback series, My Noisy Cancer Comeback, Your Healthy Cancer Comeback, and the Healthy Cancer Comeback Journal. So those are my four books. But this one is meant for everybody, right? So I've been dying to do this book. I say dying, it's something that's been
on my mind for, I don't know, 20 years. I have to write this book and I didn't, shame on me, but I have. And the book is about, I would say about 91.7% complete right now. And I'm really pumped about it. I love the content. As an author, you write, and then you go back and read what you wrote to think. Sometimes I think, oh my gosh, what could I possibly have said about this subject? And I'll be reading something I wrote four months ago and I'll think, wow, I was spot on.
Thank goodness I wrote that. That makes a lot of sense. People are going to like that. So this book is almost complete. And I've actually told I told my daughter, Ginger, I said, Ginger, I get hit by a bus. I need you to publish this book because this is the thing I want. I just want the information to be available for you. And so, of course, I have all of this information on my website. Fitsness.com is jam-packed with all of the information.
The Fitsness show is packed. But I think there's something really valuable about condensing it all in the pages of a book, making it immediately absorbable in all ways. You know, so, yeah, this needs to be done. So hopefully I don't get hit by a boss and Ginger doesn't have to figure out how to tidy up my book and publish it. But this one I'm really excited about. So in 2025, know this. And I'm looking you in your beautiful eyes. I will publish that fifth book. And hopefully you'll get it.
I mean, what else? Hopefully you do, right? Hopefully you think, ah, she bragged about it on that New Year's episode. I might as well pick up the book. But I'm really excited about it. And again, the cancer books, two of them are directly for cancer patients and survivors.
My noisy cancer comeback, anybody can use that. But this next book will be the one that hopefully anybody and everybody can read and truly benefit from because we're going to go through physical health and mental health, exercise, nutrition, all of those facets of being your best. So I'm excited about that. That's my go ahead. Let's call it my New Year's resolution. Finish the dang book. And usually I only write on airplanes, but this year I've gotten on some planes tired and just thought,
oh, I don't want to write. I'm too tired. And so now I'm actually home for quite a few weeks and I've been writing at home or driving over to Starbucks and sitting there so I can get some peace and quiet away from even my dogs, right? They need something and then I tend to them. So getting out into a place where I have nothing to deal with other than myself has been a good thing for writing. So, okay, back to you, back to you, my beloved listeners, my friends, my followers, all of those things.
Golly, I'm so grateful for you. And 2024 has been a great year for the Fitz and Show. So thank you all for sticking with me. Thank you for sharing the show with your friends. Thank you for coming back each week to listen to more. Okay. So you, your strength era, I want you to focus on being stronger in every capacity. In every capacity. And so think about that. Where and how can you become stronger? Of course, your muscles, but can you be more mentally powerful?
Can you be stronger in your career? Can you be a stronger leader, a stronger parent, a stronger child, whatever that means, right? So think about strength. Think about where that's going to benefit you in your life because this is, you know, again, you have to create these plans for yourself. So to start off. Thinking about strength, who do you want to be? That's always number one question when we talk about making progress, right?
And of course, people come to me for the health aspect, but who do you want to be? If you just came and say, Fitz, be my trainer, tell me what to do. Well, okay, I don't know what you want. You got to know, you got to be able to say, Fitz, I want to lose 32 pounds or Fitz, my shoulders are super wimpy and I want them to be stronger or my back aches and I need to get out of pain, right? I'm tight. My muscles are tight. I need to be more flexible. So specifics go a long way.
You can't, you can't get in your car and get to your GPS, open it up and say, take me there. Well, Surrey's going to take you somewhere. It's probably not a place you want to go. So think about it. You can, you can pause this show right now and make a list. That would be nice, but I want you to think about it. Better 2025 version of yourself look like and feel like, and how does he or she perform, right? There's all of these aspects of you.
You can nitpick yourself and go hardcore on making improvements in all sorts of areas. So know who you want to be, know exactly what you want. Start there, make an actual list, make it in your phone, pen and paper. I don't care, but use your chalkboard, whatever, paint it on the side of your house, but write it down, write it down specifically. Okay. And now we're going to talk about these areas where you can grow stronger and how to achieve that.
So we start with health because that's who I am, right? I want to talk about four pillars of fitness. We could call them the four pillars of fitness if you like, but that's really up to you. If you've heard this before, sorry, not sorry. If you haven't heard about the four pillars, well, here we go. I'm going to keep it short and sweet. But the four pillars of fitness are the four types of exercise and capability necessary to qualify as fit.
So if you're someone who's of ideal weight and you walk every day, you go for a two and a half mile walk and you think I'm fit, yet you never pursue strength or flexibility or balance, then you're not fit. You actually are not fit. Even if you're a marathon runner and you run a marathon every weekend, you can do a couple of pushups. You're not fit. If you can't touch your toes. You're not fit. I mean, you have to have capacity in these four different areas of fitness to qualify as fit.
And that should be the utmost importance for everybody. And it's interesting how many times I stand on a stage at a race weekend, a highly competitive race weekend where all these people have flown in from around the world and they've trained hard and they're going to do 26.2 miles with gusto. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Terrifying how many of those people do not qualify as fit because they do nothing but run. And so you need to be diverse with your fitness practices.
And these are the four pillars. There's strength, your ability to lift, push, press, and pull against resistance. That's not just your biceps, not just your butt. It's all your muscles, head to toe. And then there's your cardiorespiratory endurance. That's exercise that makes you hup and puff. What kind of stamina do you have? If Somebody is chasing you. How far can you keep going until they catch you because you quit?
Hopefully you can just keep going. And then the bad guy bends over and accidentally stabs himself in the thigh with that knife he was going to stab you with because he's unfit in the cardiorespiratory category, right? So we want you to be able to go the distance, exercise for a long period of time, cycling, swimming, karate, boxing. Dancing, whatever, any sort of exercise that makes you feel you huff and puff, that benefits your heart and lungs. That's cardiorespiratory exercise.
So strength for your total body, cardiorespiratory for your heart and lungs. And then there's flexibility. That's mobility, your body's ability to rotate, bend, twist, reach in a variety of directions without sprains, strains, or tears. You don't want to injure yourself because you put on your sock, for example. And lots of people do that, especially people in the grown-up category. You want to be able to look over your shoulder at the movies,
right? You're stuck in the little chair and the person behind you is yammering on during the movie. You want to be able to twist your body all the way around, look over your shoulder and tell them, shush. You want to be able to say shush and look them in the face with a grouchy snarl in your mouth, right? So that's mobility. Can you twist? Can you reach? And if you're doing well with that.
Congratulations, you should do even better because that's a very important pillar of fitness when it comes to reducing your chances of being injured. And then the fourth pillar of fitness is balance. And balance, why is balance training important? Balance training and having good balance are very important things because you don't want to fall down. That's right. I have someone in my life, a grown up in my life who keeps falling, breaking bones, black eyes.
It's gut-wrenching. It's killing me watching this wonderful person injure themselves. And I don't want that for me. You know, I look and I think, oh boy, I need to do strength training because I want to build my bone density, right? I want to have really strong, powerful bones. So if I trip and smack the floor, they're not going to crumble, right? They're not going to shatter.
The other real important thing I could do to make sure my bones don't break and I don't end up with black eyes and concussions is balance training. Balance is you working on your resistance to toppling over. And that is very simple. That could be as simple as standing on one foot while you brush your teeth. Right there. If you're wobbling around because that's challenging, good. That means you're making your body, you're increasing your balance, right?
That when you wobble while exercising, that increases your balance. That means you are working on stability. So anyways, It's cardio, strength, flexibility, balance, all four pillars of fitness matter. So while you're declaring who you want to be in 2025, you should grow stronger in all four of those areas. Yes, strength. Oh, and the strength thing. I'm always so excited about strength because I see the benefits, right? When I get on Instagram today.
And there's a video of this 80-something-year-old woman, and she's got biceps, right? She can do the palm of a horse or whatever. I look and I think she's the one I want to be when I grow up because she's standing up straight and she's capable. She can lift her own groceries. She can lift up her great-grandkids. And most importantly, she can handle herself. As we age, we tend to lose muscle mass unless you're fighting that,
right? unless you're really doubling down on keeping your muscle mass and increasing your muscle mass. And strength is so important for us as we age. It also is important for those who would like to lose some weight. Drives me bonkers how many people say, well, I'm going to lose weight and then I'm going to start to exercise. And I think, oh, dummy. No, do them together. you can focus on eating wisely and put in some effort at the gym, right?
Or around your neighborhood or in your home, wherever you want to exercise. But it's the nutrition part, wildly important for weight loss. That's the number one factor when it comes to weight loss. But then if you do your part with strength training, your metabolism ramps up and you start losing weight faster and faster. And isn't that what you want? I mean, do you want to really lose weight super slowly in this real drip, drip, drip, painful experience?
Or would you like to be at your goal weight sooner rather than later? I say, hell yeah, get me to all of my goals sooner rather than later. Every single one of them. I want now. I'll wait if I'm forced to, but if I can do anything to push that needle forward to get me there more quickly, yes, I'm going to do that thing. So strength training, it just benefits everything in our life. And it's.
Your power capabilities, resiliency, increases the bone density, increases your metabolism, stands you up straight, right? You've got a nice, strong, muscular back. You're going to stand up. Your posture is going to be better. People that are looking to hire a new sales guy or a new director of a special department, they want to hire that person who walks in with their shoulders back and their chin up, that very strong, capable person.
I'm not talking bodybuilder like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm just talking you, but stronger. You with some capacity to lift things, right? To lift heavy things and more importantly, lift yourself. So strength, so important. That's actually when I exercise, my number one focus is strength. So know that you're a friendly neighborhood, highly credentialed, highly experienced fitness expert. She chooses strength first. That's what I do first.
And then I do cardio and I always include balance and stretching with everything I do. But strength is number one in my book. Strength should be number one in your book too. I know strength can be scary. What I want you to do is go back maybe six months of Fits in a show episodes, you'll find an entire episode dedicated to strength training. I think it's called strength training 101. I couldn't make it any more simpler, but that's going to go a long way.
I also have the strong 25 challenge going on right now. And I want you to be a part, even if you're listening to this on January 7th, you think, oh, damn it, I'm late. That's fine. Jump right in. And the reason I've chosen a strength challenge for January is because I find most people do cardio. I could be wrong. I mean, obviously there's a lot of people who are doing nothing and there's a couple of people who just do yoga, right?
But most people, if they're going to exercise, will go do some cardio. They'll go for a walk, a bike ride. They'll play pickleball. It's a strength training. We really need to get more people committed to. And so in December with my Hottie Body Fitsness Challenge on Facebook, that's a group. If you'd like to join, I'd love to have you. It's free and it's filled with the most extraordinary humans on earth. but. The December potty challenge, December challenges. I had two.
I had a 62 mile challenge, which said, hey, just do two miles a day for the entire month of December. Very reasonable. And so many people said, yes, I'll do that. And then I posted, here's a strength training challenge for December. And only some people said they would do it. And then even fewer people have completed the challenge. I did. And golly, I benefited from it. It's funny. I have a great strength training routine and I love strength training and I'm good at it.
But when I added this challenge that I set forth for everybody else and then I took on myself, I did even better. I went through exercises. I mean, pushups are something that I love so much, but on occasion I fall out of pushups. I just start doing other things. And there was a bunch of pushups in this December challenge and I did so good and my abs feel tighter. I just love it. Pushups are so great. So I was really excited to do the strength training.
But again, I had a much smaller person or much smaller percentage of people commit to strength and then fewer finished it. So I thought, okay, in January, I don't need to challenge these people to go walk or run. They're going to do that. I'm going to challenge all of them to strength train. I chose six different exercises and I recommended 250 repetitions of each. And that's sticking with the 2025 theme. I thought, okay, 25 times 10, we've got 250, but the exercises are pushups.
Lunges, squats or squat jumps, angry ups, crunches, and supermans. And so it's just six exercises. That's 1,500 repetitions total. Now, sure, you should do other things for training. You should do lateral gait. And anyways, there's other exercises we should be doing. But here's the core, core six that will change your body significantly if you do 250 repetitions of each throughout the month of January. Now, it's not 250 reps every time you work out.
It's 250 reps total between January 1st and January 31st. Easy. Right. I say easy, but challenging, but doable. And here's the other thing. There is no fee to take part. There's no equipment necessary and there's no place you need to be. You can do these exercises anytime, anywhere in the airport, at the park, in your bedroom, at the gym, wherever you can do it. All you need is the ground. That's it. That's what you need to do these exercises. Can you modify them?
Absolutely. So you can do squats just with the air, sit in a chair, stand up, sit in a chair, stand up. That's a squat. You can do a squat holding onto a medicine ball. There are squat jumps. You can drop down low and jump real high. That's what I do when I do squat jumps. And I've seen a big difference since I started doing that with my legs. My legs got pretty scrawny with chemo. And I really, to me, built them from where they were when I finally committed to squat jumps again.
So I highly recommend squat jumps. But then let's talk about push-ups. You could do push-ups on the ground. You could do push-ups on the ground with a weight or a child on your back, or you could do push-ups on your knees, right? You could do push-ups on your knees with your butt high in the air. That's a modification. If that's not possible, you can do push-ups against the wall.
You can bring your feet two feet away from the wall, put your hands on the wall and then drop your chest forward and press back. That's beneficial to some people. So don't discount it. Oh, if I can't do it on the floor like a Marine, I'm not gonna do any. That's hogwash. That's ridiculous.
Just do what you can. And if you get really good at doing push-ups against the wall, eventually you can get down on the ground and do it with your butt up in the air on your knees and do push-ups against gravity. And then you can do it with your butt flat, right? So modify anything and everything. And then, of course, angry ups. People say, what is an angry up? Well, it's an exercise.
Created many years ago when I heard a statistic, when someone said, I heard a study that said, if people can get off the floor without using their hands, they are more likely to live longer. And of course, that's one of my core focuses is helping you all live better and longer. And so I thought, okay, well, I should get people to do that practice, getting off the floor without using their hands. So an angry up will make you angry because it's hard, but it's worth it.
And the results will make you really happy. And so to vision it, and of course there's a video on YouTube. If you go to fitness on YouTube, if you find the workout playlist, it's, it's near the bottom, but you lie on your back with your legs extended and your arms extended over your head, like upside down Superman. And then you bring your point, your fingers up towards the ceiling, and then you just lift. You hoist yourself up into standing position.
OMG, so good for your abs and your back and your glutes and your quads. It's a core, a palooza exercise. And yeah, it's hard. It's really hard. It'll make you angry. It might make you curse, but again, it'll make you better and it has the capacity to help you live longer. And so it's certainly worth having a little bit of anger in your workout in order to get those benefits. Again, if you want to cheat, and it's okay if you want to cheat, as you go to get up, cross your legs.
So go crisscross applesauce as you stand, and that will help you get off the ground. But that's a really good one. And then Superman's, it's just facing, you know, you flip over from the angry up position on your face, legs extended, arms over your head like Superman, and then you elevate all four limbs or just two or your limbs at a time and that works your low back. And it's, and I think our back muscles are neglected. I think they're neglected. So.
Work on that Superman. So again, six exercises, 250 repetitions of each throughout the entire month. Or if you're very eager and you're feeling frisky, you can do the strong 25 XL extra large. That's all 250 repetitions of each exercise weekly. So that would be a thousand total. And some people have taken that challenge and said, yes, I want to do it. But I want you all to be a part of this.
Every last one of you, I want you to invite your mom and your sister and your cousin and your coworker and your neighbor and that guy you hate at the grocery store, you should tell him to join too, because I want everybody to be stronger. And I feel like if people are fitter, then they'll all be nicer. And yeah, that benefits everybody. So when it comes to fitness, choose. Are you going to be super fit in the cardio department and you're going to increase
your flexibility? You've been too tight for too long. So do extra in those categories. Really figure it out. Where is your body great? Where is your body lacking? Where could you do better? And then make a plan to pinpoint those areas. So four pillars of fitness, got to work on that. If. Well, not if. Nutrition should be a factor. All of us can do better, even us vegetarians, right? So more fruits, more vegetables, more produce, more beans, more nuts, if you can handle them.
Healthier food, less of the bad stuff, right? So we can all do better nutritionally, even those of us who are kind of superstars with nutrition. Can we do better? Yes. Should we do better? Yes. That all affects the way our body works, the way our body feels, the way our body performs and it helps stave off ugly, ugly issues, right? Nutrition is that, you know what, when people get a cold, they instantly say, oh, I need to get some vitamin C.
That's how powerful nutrition is. You know that there's a nutrient that will help boost your immune system. And there are other nutrients that will boost other areas of your health. And so do better, do better. If you're trying to lose weight, the exact formula for weight loss is your go-to. That will help absolutely anybody take off the weight in a reasonable amount of time and keep it off forever. It's not a diet. It's not a powder. It's not a pill.
It is simply teaching you how to eat the right amount of the right food for the size you would like to be. So go to Fitsness.com. Right on the cover of Fitsness.com, there's a little box that says exact formula for weight loss. You should read it. And then you can also backtrack here at the Fits and Show episodes and listen to a couple of episodes dedicated to the exact formula for weight loss. Again, it's free and it's effective. And so you might as well go learn and get
on it, right? Get going with that. Okay, the other places we could do better, be stronger, is with our mental health. Oy, you know, being sad is no fun. feeling weak or cowardly, not a good time. Feeling lost and confused and without direction, a real bummer. And so you can... Excel in all of those areas, you just have to start choosing it, right? Maybe you're a natural athlete. That's where your strengths are. And anytime you get on a field,
you feel fantastic. But then when you have to deal with relationships. Right, your interpersonal skills or your work, or maybe you're just not so good with stress management. Okay, well, let's, let's practice those things. Let's find outlets to get better. And with mental health, I think you have to just, Well, not just because there's, some people have extra needs the same way some people have extra physical needs, right? I have one of my friends reached out recently.
She has MS and she says, I'd like to do the strong 25 challenge. Do you think I can do it? And to be honest with you, I don't think she could ever do an angry up. I don't think that's in her future. So I said, let's modify the things you can do and I'll find some other options, right? So with mental health, there are people who have similar limited abilities.
Okay, so let's work with that. But there's things we can do to increase all of our mental health, all of our coping mechanisms, all of our confidence, right? And so starting with perspective, become a bright sider if you can. If you can look at every rotten situation and figure out why that rotten situation is really not so bad, right? Why so many people have it worse and really in the scope of things 10 years from now, you won't even look back and remember that thing happening.
That's a huge step towards mental health. And so number one, perspective. Number two, you have to choose joy. You have to be someone who's going to figure out how to be happy anyways, right? Anyways, Trust me, I had someone who was so horrible to me last year. I've been dealing with a nightmare over this person. I choose to be happy anyways, because that's just one person, right? That was unpleasant. That was hard. That was difficult. But that person is only a small piece of my entire life.
Could I sit and let this whole situation bring me down, help me make me lose sleep and be miserable? For sure. Or I can look around at all the wonderful things that are going on in Fitzland and think, yeah, pretty good. So we start there. I'm choosing to be happy anyway. Life is not always gonna go your way. You're not always going to get the Christmas gift you want. You're not always going to get the job you want. Sometimes you might get fired and your housemate burned down.
You still have to be able to look around and figure out why it could be a good day, right? I got to tell you, if I pull up to this house, I call it the Kohler Mansion. If I pull up to the Kohler Mansion and there's four fire engines in the house, it's billowing with smoke and fire. As long as I see my family and my pets, that's it. Hooray! I jump up and down, cheering, celebrating. What a wonderful freaking day. The house burned down and nobody was killed.
Hell yes, I am the happiest girl with a burning house on freaking earth. And so you need to choose that for yourself. Choose joy, right? Something hits the fan and you're thinking, woo, that's not cool, but it could be way worse. I'm so happy. That's the only problem I'm facing. And so that goes a long way to making you stronger because when those outside elements, your annoying sister or your rude mother-in-law or whatever, if they show up.
And you let that ruin your day or even an hour, that's on you. Shame on you, right? So you have to be stronger than the forces that are working against you. You can choose joy in spite of a mean person or a loss or whatever. Golly, you will be unstoppable, right? If we put that energy along with a healthy body, holy crap, you are it. You have become the real version of Superman. I'm not even going with Supergirl because she's nothing compared to Superman.
We're all going to be that guy. Even us ladies, we're going to be that guy. Mental health and physical health. You put that together, you've got it all. But you have to choose it. You have to choose the exercise. It doesn't just happen you don't just wake up and your arms are moving back and forth and you're huffing and puffing. And that doesn't just happen.
You have to decide you are going to exercise, even if it's cold outside, even if it's raining, even if your kids are screaming or sick, you have to choose it. Same thing for mental health. You have to practice good habits that give you a clear mind and a happy heart. And choosing joy is a real thing. It's a real thing that you can practice and become good at. So perspective, choosing joy, an alignment.
Pursuing your passions, they go a long way to helping you choose joy because if you all, your passions are yours, right? I got to tell you, Kim Sharaf, she's one of my oddies. She's one of my fitness fiends. I love her. She just ran her 100th half marathon. Pretty cool. She's from Long Island. She's part of a group. She has a strength coach. Great. And she needlepoints. And she just posted on Facebook. I think she said she's posted or she's needlepointed of 30 different things this year.
I think Kim is figuratively one of the happiest girls alive. Why? Because every time I look, she's doing something that she personally loves. She's running. She's strength training. She does Kiwanas. That makes her really happy. And needlepoint. And so what is your needlepoint? What is your running? Is it music? Is it art? Is it bird watching? Is it lizard watching? Is it plug watching?
No, watch whatever you want. But if it makes you happy, you're going to be so much more capable of living out your mission of choosing joy, right? And again, I got to tell you the things that work for me, exercise, the animals, music, these are go-tos for me. If my house burns down and I'm the weirdo out in front of my cheerleading uniform, like freaking, yay, the house burned down and they're okay. Hooray, hooray, right? I'm that girl.
What am I going to do? I don't know. We're going to go exercise together. I'm going to say, okay, family, let the firefighters deal with this. We're going to the park and we're going to walk. We're going to walk and talk. Maybe we'll walk and cry if one of them wants to cry, right? But I know that exercise heals me, right? Anytime I get ugly energy just built up in my chest, I know that I have to exercise. I have to exercise. I will get on the treadmill at three in the morning.
I will go for a walk. I will do pushups. I will do whatever it takes. Even I'm doing pushups in an airport because they have me on a million delays. I have to. I know that's medicine for my body. And so needle pointing certainly is doing Kim Sharoff something good, right? That's soothing her soul. So whatever it is for you, do that thing all the freaking time. Of course, leave room for other things. But when I say all the freaking time, every single one of your days include
at least one thing you're passionate about. the thing that is just for you. It's not for your kids, your friends, your neighbors. It's just for you. Do that thing. And you will be so much more likely to be a bright sider, to be a happy, happy person. The other thing when it comes to choosing joy and mental health, sanity, is dealing with real sadness because that's okay. It happens. It happens to me. It happens to everybody. And then getting on with it, right? And so my game plan through cancer,
right? Cancer was really hard. And it's been a handful of years now, five years from mission, four years out of treatment. But the reality was I cried every day. It was stressful. It was scary. I was sick. It was hard. But this was my policy. And write it down if you need to. But I would go in my car or in my bathroom and I would boo-hoo. I didn't want my kids to see me cry, right? So I would boohoo all by myself. For about 15 minutes. And then I would get on with it.
That's right. I'm no queen of England, but it was like, get it out and get on with it. And I did. And it served me so well because I really could have sat and basked in the misery. I could have had a full-blown pity party for 15 freaking months of treatment. I could have been the most miserable girl on earth, but that's not who I am. And my instinct is always to fight for joy. And inside, when I get sad, my body starts saying, stop it, stop it, stop it.
This is awful. There's an alarm system that goes off. And so I instantly look for the remedy, right? And oh my gosh, I feel stressed. I feel sad. What do I do? And I go, okay, exercise. There's Piper and Joey. Go hug the dogs. Oh, my dogs aren't with me. Let me find somebody else's dog to pet, right? So I start looking for those remedies.
So you have to know what your remedies are, but whether you have a breakup or someone dies or you lose a job or I don't know, your favorite person lost their election. It's okay to be sad. It's not okay to bask in misery. It's not okay to bring that one thing into every aspect of your life, not only bringing yourself down, keeping yourself down, but making everybody around you miserable too. So fight for joy. Fight for joy in every single capacity and don't feel selfish for taking me time.
If it's quiet space, if it's alone time, whatever it is, you are not selfish for prioritizing you. You are responsible. You know, this is how people fly off the handle. They haven't taken me time. They haven't exercised. They don't have any passions. Maybe they don't have a counselor and they need one. And then they fly off the handle one day and they hurt somebody or they do something horrible because they weren't managing themselves.
And the only person who can manage you is you, unless you're a child. And I don't know how many kids listen to the Fitz in the show. I'm guessing close to 100% of my listeners are grownups. So know this, every last one of you are, fully, completely responsible for your own mental health. So take care of it, right? Take care of it. And if you need to bring in an outside support system, do that, right? If you had a cold or a swollen ankle, you will go see a doctor and that wouldn't be a bad thing.
If something in your your, your heart, your head hurts and it's making you sad, go see a doctor, right? There's somebody out there who can help you and you should get that help because it's your, your, your mental health, right? You need it. And your mental health or your lack of it could be a hardship to others. And I know you don't want that. So mental health important, grow stronger with great habits. You can do this. Become that person. Oh, and here's the other part of mental health.
Confidence. Confidence. And that really comes with you managing the hard stuff, right? You being able to rise above evil behavior or mean words or arguments on social media. When you can rise above that, all of a sudden you feel a little taller. You feel like, okay, I did a great job with that thing. eye, I'm not so bad, right? So confidence goes a long way. And what I find with confidence, you're much more likely to get the things you want and the things certainly
that you need if you are confident. It's funny. I grew up in a scrappy situation, right? I had a bunch of fist fights as a kid. I sure did. And in Fort Lauderdale, we all did. I wasn't the only girl fighting. There was a lot of us fighting. And then when I came up to college, well, Well, in grad school, I started kickboxing and I started kickboxing competitively. And then I started becoming really good. I'm really good at kicking people in the head. And that was kind of my thing.
And I don't know, I guess here at the University of Florida, other girls from scrappy places showed up and they would be mean at a bar and want to start fights with me. Now, I think previously before my kickboxing training, I might have, I don't know, I think they might've thrown a punch, right? Girls would start something. I'd, I'd fire back and then, They would maybe slug me in the face, right? But once I started fighting, I think I just had an air about myself, the old F around and find out.
And girls would start with me and I would very calmly address them and then they would flank away, cower off. They would back down because I was calm, because I was confident. Confidence is really powerful. And we will be right back. Are you looking for the perfect gift for a loved one battling cancer? The Cancer Comeback Series by Fitz Kohler offers hope, inspiration, and practical guidance. With your healthy cancer comeback, my noisy cancer comeback, and the Healthy Cancer Comeback Journal.
These books are a lifeline for all patients and survivors. Right now, you can order autographed copies at a special discount. Show your support and help a loved one go from sick to strong. Visit Fitzness.com today. That's F-I-T-Z. P-N-E-S-S dot com. Fitsness dot com. We're back. If you show up at work, you want to have a conversation with your
boss about having a raise. If you go in there feeling good, not just nervous and feeling scared, what's he going to say if you walk in and say, hey, you know what, boss? It's been a great year, right? The boss says, yeah. And you say, well, I am so happy that I've been able to contribute so much to our increase in profits. It's been a real pleasure for me bringing in so many new clients and sealing so many deals. I'm excited to do the same thing the next year. How about we talk about a raise?
That boss is probably going to look at you and say, you know what? You're right. Geez, yeah, you made a great case for yourself and you seem pretty confident, so I'm gonna give you more money as opposed to you coming in and being like, well, I just, you know, my kids wanna go on a field trip and I'm late for bills and I just, can I please have a raise?
No, no, the answer is no. So when you are more confident, you are gonna get so many more things that you want and you need and shoot, that boss may walk by you at your desk with your straight back and your shoulders flung back and your chin up high. And that boss may say, you know what? You look like you need some extra money here. Have it. So confidence, practice, practice, talking like a confident person. Practice standing like a confident person.
Even if you feel nervous inside that old saying, till you fake it, make it, it really works. In my younger years, I used it a whole bunch and it got me to great places. So, confidence. Practice that. And then when it comes to your career in 2025, know what you want to accomplish. Who are you going to be in 2025? Are you going to be the new director? Are you going to be a leader in your organization? Are you going to work towards retirement?
Are you going to start your own business? Are you going to expand your business? Know that because why not? If you're going to work, you might as well be working for more money, working for more joy, accomplishing more things, working in a position you feel better about, working in a place you'd prefer to live. Focus on your career. You can make goals today that may pay off in November in spades, but without these goals, you're probably never going to get there.
I'm in the middle of gutting my office. We're doing some remodeling in here. And I found this dry erase board that I bought, I think in 2008. And I listed these things I wanted to accomplish. And, and then I have check marks next to most of them. And some of them were simple as I wanted a free Disney cruise for my family.
And I got that from Disney. I was like, Hey, I'm a, I'm a media professional and I like to check out your ship and tell people about, and they're like, okay, come on over and join us on the Disney Wonder for four days for free. So, but I had to want to do that. I had to think of it and then I had to reach out and say, hey, I'm interested. Are you? And so there's all of these interesting things on my dry erase board and I'm looking, I think almost all of them have come true. Yay me.
So now I need to, I really don't want to erase this one because it's really so charming, all the things I wanted to do. So yeah, I might have to buy a new dry erase board or maybe I'll just use the notes section of my phone, but yeah, make a list of things you'd like to accomplish and then go accomplish them. With your family, how are you going to strengthen that relationship?
Are you going to have more family exercise sessions, you know, as weeknights between seven and eight, your time to play with your family, go play basketball, play racquetball, play pickleball, swim laps, have a dance party using your video game console. I mean, there's things you can do, right? Strengthen the bonds with your family. Maybe plan a vacation, maybe plan a staycation.
Maybe you plan to do homework with your kids or to read books with your spouse, or I don't know, maybe go to the casino with your mom. That's what I do. My mom likes a casino and it makes her happy. So we go, we pay the penny slots. When we're done with our 40 bucks, we go home. But yeah, strengthen the bonds of your family and make that part of your 2025 era of strength game plan. And then what about fun? What are you going to do for fun? Things that are fun to you.
So last year, you know, I'm working on my 21 round challenge. And so I live a very fun life. I'm always doing things that I think are fun. So I mean, yeah, I could keep writing it down, but I look towards the bigger things. And so I'm including huge deal things to replace each round of my chemotherapy with a round of awesome. And so I've completed five of my 21 rounds. Three of the highlights include running the Boston Marathon.
Being on a Dancing with Stars competition, and swimming with the whale sharks. That was a dream come true, right? So I'm planning big, huge things to... A counter to replace these rounds of misery. You don't need chemo. You don't need cancer to get involved. You can, you can do 21 rounds of awesome through the year 2025 for Fitz Kohler for your friendly neighborhood fitness pro, right?
You, I could be that for you. We can do it together. You can go have fun to celebrate me not having cancer, right? Or you can do it with somebody else. You know who has cancer or you can just screw cancer, do it yourself. But yeah, game plan And for fun, some of the real cool things I have some friends doing this year is hiking the Grand Canyon, rim to rim. I have another climbing Mount Everest. Not on my fun list, but certainly on there is good luck to them. And so I don't know.
Maybe you just want to take a trip to SeaWorld or a zoo or Broadway. Maybe you want to go see Wicked on Broadway or whatever is on Broadway. I'm not really good at Broadway, but you know what I'm saying. And there are things that you could do that are super freaking fun. And you could write those down today and then do them before December 31st, 2025. Lastly, I'd like you to become a stronger athlete, whatever that means to you. Whatever sport you love, do better. Do more of it.
Get better. Mine's ballroom dance right now. I'm going to do another ballroom dance competition in 2025. And I'm excited. Every week I meet with a coach, an instructor, and I'm doing better. and, you know, making the progress gradually, slowly, painfully slow, but it's fun. I love, I love getting better and I love working hard. And certainly I love the opportunity to compete.
So whether you're going to run a race, run, you walk a race, or you're going to do a triathlon, you're going to compete in a bowling tournament. My goodness, you should make some plans. And it makes me sad when people give up athletics when they leave high school, right? That's 18 years of your life. And then no more, no more. I just, I find that to be a big fail. That's my opinion. But I think sports, you know, the same benefits children.
Receive or garner from sports, which is learning to be a follower, learning to be a leader, getting exercise, learning to win with grace, lose with grace, skills and so forth, and earning that camaraderie. Same thing goes for adults playing sports. You get all of those benefits and they still make you better. And so if you're not involved in any sport, I highly encourage you to pick one.
Just give it a try. And when you get there, tell everybody you're a newbie, you're a beginner, and then they won't expect you to be great. They won't have any expectation that you will have any skills at all. They'll just know that you're giving it a try. They'll probably be excited to give you help. So yeah, Stronger for 2025. This is your era of strength and all over.
I hope I've targeted every part of you, inside, your innards, your mind, your outsides, your external affairs and relationships. You know, strength is. Better than weakness, better than weakness. I, I've said it in fitness, but on any given day, doing any given thing, would you ever say, gosh, I wish I was a little weaker. Is there ever a time where you would prefer to be weaker instead of strong, whether it's physical or mental strength? I don't, I don't think so. So yeah, let's get stronger.
Let's do better. Let's be better. And you, you're already so cool. And I love you so much. I'm very excited about you. But can you be even better? And who cares what I think? Can you be even better in a way that makes you happier? It makes you feel better, perform better, everything in your life, more successful, more joyful? I believe the answer is yes. Okay. So again, Happy New Year. I love you. I hope you had a lot of fun on New Year's. I'm recording this on December 31st, 2024.
So maybe tonight you have fun or yesterday you had fun, whatever. Happy New Year. Okay, song of the show. Song of the show is not just a song. The song of the show is a whole freaking playlist. That's right. I want you to go to Spotify, the free version of Spotify. I mean, if you got the paid one, fine for you. But the free version of Spotify and look up Fitsness. And you can get my entire workout playlist, which I built just for you.
It's all of my favorite high energy, mostly workout songs from every genre, every generation of music. You'll find songs from the 60s and the 80s and the 2000s and country and rap and hip hop and pop. You'll find it all. And I love it. And you can save it and then listen to it whenever you exercise or whenever you drive or even during your sleep. Try that. Let me know how it goes. And then communication tip for this show is to tell people exactly what you want.
Don't beat around the bush. Don't make them guess. Whether it's a small thing like your bestie or your romantic partner asking you where you want to eat for dinner. If you know where you want to eat, just freaking say it. Just say it. Don't drive them crazy by not knowing. I mean, if you really don't know, fine. You can say, I don't care wherever you want to go. But if you would like Asian or Mexican or steak or Burger King, whatever it is, just say it.
Say it. Speak your mind. Do not be a mystical creature nobody can figure out. And the same thing goes for work. If you're applying for a job and the boss says, how much will it take to get you to work here? I don't know. You say, freaking, I need $83,000 and a company vehicle and a cell phone and benefits. I don't know. that's just off the top of my head, whatever it is, speak up. And usually if you ask for more, you do even better, ask for more than you want.
And then, you know, you'll, you normally fall somewhere in the middle, but yeah, speak up, tell the truth, be forthright. If, if you have a spouse or a romantic partner and you want more sex, you tell them, I want more sex. If you have children and they're rude, you should tell them, I need you to be more polite. Okay? Just say what's on your mind and you'll be surprised how people will adjust to accommodate your needs.
But they just have to know. And you deserve to be heard. You deserve to be heard. So speak your mind. Okay, folks, have I told you that I loved you? I think I have. I think you might probably be thinking I'm pretty weird right now, but I love you so much. If you haven't done so yet, please click like, and subscribe. If you'd like to leave a review, that would fill my noisy heart up with joy. And yeah. Get to work. Bye, team. Hi, this is Rudy Novotny, the voice of America's marathons.
We all love how much running has benefited every aspect of our lives, so much so that most of us only wish we'd started sooner. Wouldn't it be wonderful to gift the opportunity to children of today? Well, you can. The Morning Mile is a before-school walking and running program that gives children a chance to start each day in an active way while enjoying fun, music, and friends. That's every child, every day.
It's also supported by a wonderful system of rewards, which keeps students highly motivated and frequently congratulated. Created by our favorite fitness expert, Fitz Kohler, Morning Milers across the country have run over 2 million miles and are having greater success with academics, behavior, and sports because of it. The Morning Mile is free to the child, free to the school, and is inexpensively funded by businesses or generous individuals.
Help more kids get moving in the morning by visiting MorningMile.com. Champion the program at your favorite school or find out more about sponsorship opportunities. That's MorningMile.com. Long may you run.