Live better and longer with the fitness show hosted by fitness expert author and tv personality Fitz Koehler 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 Koehler. Well, hi team. I'm Fitz Koehler, your very bossy and noisy and soggy fitness pro and author from Fitzness.com and welcome to the Fitzness Show.
I am so darn soggy because we have had crazy storms here in Florida. That's right, Debbie. Debbie did Florida and boy did she ever. We have so much water around here. I'm in Gainesville, Florida. The earth is completely saturated and I don't know, about 40 million trees and branches have fallen down. So not a huge deal here. I mean, whatever, it's soggy and we've lost some trees. In fact, sadly, I think the trees have fallen on some mobile homes and I believe at least
one person has lost their life, which is not good at all. That's always tragic. But for me and our house, I've had some chairs blown over. It's been raining. Oh my gosh. But you know what? Made the best. They basically shut down the majority of town when these tropical storms and hurricanes come through. If it's a real hurricane, when it gets here, basically nothing's open other than first responders. Bless their hearts. But the grocery store was open yesterday.
The gas stations were open yesterday. All the The regular, even doctor's offices and so forth have shut down. And so that leaves me at home. And I love the opportunity to be stuck at home. I really like my home. I like my people. I have both of my kids home. It was just, it was a lovely day. I have treadmill in my garage, so I couldn't go to the gym, but I did five miles on the treadmill.
That's right. I broke it up into two sections, watched the Olympics while I was on the treadmill and then poof, five, five miles disappeared. I probably could have done 50 yesterday if I wasn't so committed to hanging out with Ginger and Parker. Speaking of the Olympics, if you have not listened to my last podcast episode on Olympic sex with Ginger, you should. You should. You know what?
I just, can you, I just, I don't know, not to be creepy, but to get into Olympic village with the most athletic fit body. Some of these athletes are really gorgeous too. I would like to backtrack my life and be 23 and be in the the Olympics. In fact, as a kid, I was obsessed with the Olympics and I wanted to be an Olympian. I just wasn't particularly good at any sports at that time. That's right. I wasn't good at anything, but I really had a deep obsession with the Olympics.
And then this is interesting. When I was 20, I think I started competitively kickboxing and I was pretty darn good. I was very, very good. The competition was slim because it just was a very unpopular sport, but I thought, you know what? I'd be happy to drop my kicks. I was a great kicker, and so my kicks were a great asset to me as a fighter, but I was willing to drop them if I could fight in the Olympics. I thought, well, sure, I'll go compete and see if I can make the Olympic team.
But they did not have boxing for women in the Olympics. That's right. That's right. I'm officially one of those women who was deprived in opportunity based on my women's status, which whatever. I really, truly feel that opportunity is equal now for the most part. I don't have any reason to complain in my daily life, but I could have been an Olympian at that point and I wanted to. In fact, I went to compete in the Sunshine State Games here in Florida, which is kind of like a Florida Olympics.
And I would have only had men to fight because there were no other women there. And I didn't even tell my trainer. I don't know why. I just thought, he won't like this. So I'm going to go do it by myself and just see what happens. And there were no other men in my weight division. I was 111 pounds at that point. I think I was super fly or something like that. But yeah, there was nobody to compete against.
So I took my scrawny little can home. I was sad about it. But yeah, the Olympics are so cool. And I think gymnastics reigns as the big... Entertaining competition, right? I think everybody loves gymnastics and on both sides are men and women have been extraordinary, but track is so fun. And the announcing I do tends to be for longer distances, 5k and above. But if you're one of those runner folks, that's right.
If you are one of my runners or walkers, when you are not strength training, I want you to take a good, solid look at these track athletes. It's interesting. There's some people within endurance sports who say strength training is not necessary or strength training is harmful. I think really let's look at the fastest people on earth because there is nothing but muscles. Just they're all so muscular. The women and the men, they're bulging, bulging quads, bulging glutes,
bulging biceps. they are overall head to toe muscular. And so yeah, muscles aren't going to make you worse. They're going to make you better. They're going to help you prevent injury. They're going to help you enjoy your athletic, your athletic experience more often. And yeah, it's just look at those folks. It's butt capital of the world. Your butt, man, you should be working on those hips and glutes all the time.
If you run, that will help keep you strong, help keep, make you faster and keep you out of the hospital, out of the doctor's office, off of the bench. That's right. It'll keep you off of the bench. So anyways, I'm enjoying that. I'm enjoying surfing. I like watching pole vaults. Oh, the pole vaulter, the French pole vaulter who got over the bar and then clipped it with his wang. It's probably the greatest story of the entire Olympic games.
And I know that man, And that poor man is devastated that that happened. But you got to admit, it's very, very funny. Also, I think, what? I don't know. That's kind of a pat on the back guy thing. Like, yeah, I'm so well endowed that I whack the bar with my wang. I just think it's very, very funny. I keep seeing those clips go around on Instagram and they make me happy. They make me laugh. And if you can't laugh at yourself, then you're doing something wrong. I tell you what I've done.
Plenty of stupid, stupid things in my day. In fact, I just posted a video today on Instagram. Alex had asked on vitsniss.com, he asked me a question. He said, what's the weirdest thing you do? What's the weirdest thing about you? And so the weirdest thing about me, and plus I'm sure there's a lot of weird things. But the weirdest thing is I have to wear this sleeve to prevent lymphedema.
So when I had breast cancer, they removed the lump in my breast, but they also removed 13 lymph nodes in my left armpit because the cancer had already spread there and they had to just keep gathering and removing lymph nodes until I was cancer free. And they did. But because of that, my lymphatic system may not drain as well as it's supposed to. And that could create swelling. swelling and then I could have this big swollen arm forever and it could be painful and may limit functionality.
So I definitely do not want lymphedema. That's what they call it. And so they make me wear a sleeve when I fly. I'm very fortunate that I don't have to wear the sleeve every day. So many women have to wear this sleeve from just around the clock. It really makes me sad for them because I can imagine it's uncomfortable and inconvenient and all of those things. I have have to wear the sleeve only on the plane. So I try not to be a baby about it. However, I, I only wear it as I need to.
So I'll sit down, I put this sleeve, I keep it in this very special place in my announcer backpack. And then when I sit down, I wait until we're about to take off. And then I put the sleeve on and I can only wear short sleeves or tank tops on a plane because I can't get it under a long sleeve shirt. So that's, that's where I'm at with this stupid sleeve. Anywho, The weird thing is that when I pull it on, it's tight. I have to pull, pull, pull to get it up to my armpit. And every single time
I do, and I pull up the sleeve, it hits my armpit. And then my right hand releases and then pow, punches me in the face. I know it's coming. And I tell myself, don't punch yourself in the face. But it just, I don't know. I just let it go with such force and it pops me in the nose or the mouth. And it makes me laugh. It's thankful I have not caused any bruises or cuts on my face by my big, powerful right hand. But it's ridiculous. And you know what? I laugh at myself.
That's the moral of that story is we're all weird. We all do silly things. And yeah, punching myself in the face is pretty ridiculous. So hopefully the French pole vaulter can get over that big bulge of his causing a big old problem. My goodness. I hope he can come back to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 28 and redeem himself. And I think he's probably going to get some endorsements and some spokesperson opportunities that stem from this ridiculous pole vaulting.
Wang debacle. So I was recently in Minnesota and I want to tell you all about that. Minnesota, which I like Minnesotans very, very much. I get to spend quality time with many Minnesotans whenever I announced the Fargo marathon. But this time I went specifically just to announce in Minnesota, which was mud girl, mud girl, Minneapolis. Now, mind you, these obstacle course races can be tricky. They will label and it's not just mud girl. Spartan does it.
Savage Savage does it, Tough Mudder, they all do the same thing. They will name the race to the closest big city. So let's say it might be Mud Girl, Miami, but maybe the actual or Spartan Miami, the actual race will not actually be in the Miami city limits. It'll be 40 minutes away from the city limits because they have to get to a rural piece of land that's large enough to conduct these races and dig up the
ground. And they do all sorts of construction when preparing for these obstacle course races. So my girl Minneapolis wasn't really Minneapolis. It was about 40 minutes outside of Minneapolis. But that was an excellent experience. And I can't wait to tell you all about it. But before I get there, I'm going to tell you about the Minnesota Zoo. That's right. Because I'm a zoo nerd. And you know that whenever I travel, I hit the zoo.
And I'm trying to hit a zoo in all 50 states. And I'm doing pretty well so far. But Minnesota Zoo was absolutely fantastic. It was a very fun zoo, very well laid out. I normally say that my criteria to be a five-star zoo is a polar bear or a grizzly bear or a cassowary. I love the cassowary. They did not have a polar bear or a cassowary. They had brown bears, which apparently brown bear is just a grizzly bear from another neck of the woods.
So they had these two monster big bears, which I love very much. But they had some interactive experiences, which... Knocked my socks off. I had a fun time and I go alone, right? Sometimes I bring friends, but usually I do these zoos alone. So it's really exciting when I can walk away saying, I had a super fun time. It wasn't just lovely to look at the animals. I had some giggles and stuff. So they have these, the zoo is separated into trails.
There's the tropics trail and I can't remember the name of the other trails, but no, there's other trails. So there's paths that if you stay on, you will see all of the animals. You don't have to worry about missing any. They literally say, do the tropics trail, and then you will see all the tropical things, the gibbons and the birds and the this and the that. So I go to one trail, and I see a reindeer, and I see bison. Go buffalo, and what else do I see? Moose, da moose, which I love da moose.
And da moose is the, it's a very big thing for my daughter, Ginger and I, we love dumb moose. We went to Colorado last year and we were searching for dumb moose. And then we found dumb moose right outside our hot tub, which was very exciting. So anyways, dumb moose. And then they had this llama experience and you go into this sectioned off area and there's about a dozen llama just just roaming free. And they instruct you, they say, stay off the path or stay on the path and don't
touch the llamas. So people can just roam around with the llamas. And the llamas are so cute. They're big and they're furry and they're quite friendly. So I went in planning on following these rules to the T because I'm a, mostly a rule follower and respectful of the zoo requests, but I'm standing there and this llama comes on over and just literally puts this little face on my shoulder. And how could I not rub its little chin? That would have been rude for me to. Diss the llama by ignoring it.
So I gave it a little rub on the chin and neck, but it was so fun. There was llamas just roaming around. There was no llama drama. It was all llama good, llama happy, llama wonderful, and just a great experience. That's what I crave. When I go to a zoo, I just want to touch everyone. I want to kiss the animal. I want to smooch the lion on its It's a little button nose and a hug the bears. And so when you get an opportunity to be with an animal, I feel like that's really, really rewarding.
So I'm hanging with the llamas, really pleased with my life at that point. And then I look over and I see people riding the camels. And I think, oh, my gosh, got to go do that. So. I leave the llamas. I say goodbye. I love you. Thank you, llamas. And then I go over. It's only eight bucks. For eight bucks, I get to go for a ride on Jordan the camel. And it's just a loop. You know, when you have kids or when you were a kid and they would take you on a pony ride and loop you around the little area.
Well, that's exactly what this was. But it was just fun. It was super fun. And you access the camel from kind of a staging. You have to go on an elevated surface. They help you on. And I sat on the hump. So there were people in front of me, the people that went before, there was two people. They would sit in front and behind the hump. And then when I got there, the guy said, you should sit on the hump. And I was like, are you sure the camel is going to like that?
He said the camel would prefer that. And so I did. I got right up there on the hump. and I don't know, it was maybe four or five minutes of being walked around in a big circle by Jordan. But the handler was very sweet and gave me all sorts of camel fun facts. And I don't know, it was just lovely. It was a great time and not something you get to do at all zoos. So they seem to love those animals very well, take great care of the animals. And it was super to be able to interact with that camel.
I've actually, I have ridden quite a few camels in was when I was in Russia in St. Petersburg and in front of the Hermitage Museum, they had camels and I got to ride it and it was dirty and it spit a lot, but I was still very happy to be with that camel. It was a very sweet camel. And I hope they took some of my money that I spent to do something lovely for the camel in exchange for that ride. So the camel ride was great. Some of the other their highlights, the Minnesota Zoo included the shows.
They had a bird show, which is absolutely fantastic and fun. Reminded me very much of SeaWorld. So sometimes you go to a zoo or. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to say a zoo and their performances aren't anything special and they don't have the humor that many of the larger, more sophisticated parks do. But Minnesota is a a big old sophisticated zoo and their, their bird show was really educational and then really fun and very funny. And they had a crow that took someone's.
Bottle of water and recycled it, literally flew it across the arena over to a garbage can and popped that little bottle into a circular, a little hole in the recycling bin. And they had, there's some shenanigans with their staff, which I won't tell you about in case you go to see, but it's just fun and funny. They also have an area where you can pet sharks. Yes. Not great Great white sharks, but little sharks in a big, wide tank.
And you could pet sea anemones and sea cucumbers. It's just nice, really interactive stuff, which made my day great. So four and a half stars for the Minnesota Zoo. I think it would be even better if they did have a polar bear or even a panda bear or a cassowary, but I'm giving it four and a half stars. It was a wonderful day and the tickets were affordable. I think I paid 20 something dollars to get in, which is great for the whole day.
They also, if you have children, bring their swimsuit because they had a splash pad so the kids could run around in the water, which, as you know, in the middle of a theme park day, you've got to give kids the opportunity to run around and have some fun. So, yeah, Minnesota Zoo all day. I'm looking to see. Did I miss anything? No, no, it was good. Oh, they also had this great sound system throughout the zoo where sometimes it was music, which was thematic to the section of the park you're in.
And sometimes they just had really cool nature sounds. So I give it four and a half stars. Love Minnesota Zoo. If you're ever in the area, it's in Minneapolis. You should go give it a go like I did. OK, so the zoo's over. I go to my hotel. So lovely to be in a hotel alone sometimes. Sometimes I'm sure you know that feeling just to have the whole king size bed to yourself. I was a happy camper. But when I woke up Saturday, it was time to get up and go do Mud Girl.
If you are unfamiliar, Mud Girl offers athletic adventures for women. It's the request that it be only women. Now, some guys show up, they'll show up with their wives or whatever. But the request is it's a comfortable place for women to be together and not be intimidated, blah, blah, blah. up. So I would say 99.999% of our athletes were female and it's about a three mile course. And they just stack it with super fun obstacles that are super doable for pretty much everything.
And I've done all the obstacle course races. I've done Tough Mudder. I've done Savage. I've done Spartan and I love them all, but some of them are very physically intensive. You have to do pull-ups or you have to swing from the bars. You know, if you don't have a lot of upper body strength, you're going to fail at a lot of those obstacles, which is fine. You should still go do them, but know that a race like Mud Girl, There's pretty much nothing you're going to fail with. Some of the obstacles
are inflatable. Some of them just require you to crawl. I'm trying to think. There's a couple of little balance obstacles. It's all for fun. It's all for silly. It's all for adventure. But if you are not a super strong person, if you are a person who does not have a ton of cardio endurance, fine. Who cares? I mean, really, we don't even time you. You show up and you start when you start and you finish when we finish or when you finish and nobody cares.
It's simply for you to step out of your box and have some freaking fun. And so I love announcing these races because when these thousands of mud girls show up, they're ready to have fun. And some of them might be a little nervous and I get that. And so I try to talk them off the edge, try to convince them the things we've talked about here on the fitness show. That cancer is scary and war is scary. and, you know, crawling through the med with some fun girls, not so scary.
And so take the edge off at the start line. Our start lines are berserk. I mean, it is, we have a DJ. DJ is playing all sorts of fun stuff. I work with the DJs to make sure it's the right vibe that I'm looking for, but I always bring some of the participants up on my stage and make them dance leaders. And you never know what you're going to get. And, you know, I say, who out there loves to dance? And the hand goes up and I say, okay, you get on up here.
And they think, oh no, not me. And I say, yeah, yeah, get on up. And so I bring them on the stage with me. It's about a four by four stage. We both stay there together. And I say, okay, everybody, what's your name? Susie. Okay, everybody follow Susie. And then Susie just starts dancing. And sometimes, well, I'll tell you what, when they put their arms up in the air and sway side to side, that's fantastic. That's actually genius. It's a very simple move, but you can get everybody involved.
And it's visually very fun to see all the arms up in there. But sometimes you do very complicated moves that people try to follow along. There's often booty shaking and twerking. And if I bring someone up too young, there's always that eight-year-old says, me, I love to dance. And let's say the girl is Tanasia. And I say, okay, Tanasia, give us some moves. People can follow along. Tanasia leaps up into the air and does a split jump. No, everybody laughs, but some people do try the split jump.
So anyways, it's a lot of fun. You never know what you're going to get. it's all about just being silly and having the adventure. And I sound like a broken record, but it's true. And we have all ages. I think the youngest is seven or eight, but we have plenty of women in their seventies. We had so many mother-daughter teams. We had so many daughter, mother, grandmother teams. There were co-workers and so many people get matching outfits, right? That's a thing.
They wear their white shirt with the, I don't know, the phrase on it or anyways, there's phrases and there's team names and it's very silly. And some of it's quite raunchy, which I have to, I have to skirt carefully. So I don't ever say anything inappropriate into the microphone, which I'm very cautious of, but yeah, just, just an awesome, awesome environment. So I got there at seven something. I think I started welcoming athletes to the
start line at eight 30 continued on until about three. It was blistering hot. It was in the 90s. So I worked very hard not to pass out. Lots and lots of Gatorade, lots and lots of water. Go Gators. Yeah, lots of sunscreen just for six, seven hours, however long I'm out there to prevent myself from passing out. And there was actually a few times where I was standing on the stage getting ready to send the women off where I started feeling a little woozy and hoping that I could get.
Get them off and then get under the little DJ tent to get a drink and maybe have a seat for a couple of moments. But just an excellent, excellent experience. Big shout out to DJ Biko from Groovy Entertainment in Minnesota. He was fantastic. And if anybody lives in Minnesota and you're going to have a party of some sort or an event, Groovy Entertainment, DJ Biko was phenomenal.
And then I tell you that I felt maybe I might pass out while announcing maybe about 10 times I've felt that way because it was hot. It was super hot. So at 2.30, we finish up with the regular participants. So thousands, 5,000 women are off there. I've sent them off to do the course. And now we have about a 30-minute break until all the volunteers get to do the course.
And so many people, they show up and they'll volunteer for the morning with Mud Girl in exchange for being able to do the course for free, which I think is a great deal. They have so much fun serving our participants. And then they transition over to doing the course. And so I decided to do the course with them. I had a little hesitation at some point where I thought, whew, I'm pretty beat up. Maybe I shouldn't. But then I thought, no, I have to.
I have to. This is opportunity for fun times and giggles. And I will regret it if I don't go do it. So I joined in the crowd. We had one of our operations guys start us off. He thanked the volunteers in a very endearing way. And then he started off. So I went with them and I had a blast. You know, it's nice to go do the things. It's nice to be on the obstacle, but instantly you make friends out there and almost nobody runs. That's, I mean, that's an exaggeration. Some people might run.
None of us ran other than just a little bit. So I made friends with Tamara. Who's originally from St. Kitts. And little girl Gracie was about 10. She was so cute. She was part of our posse. I mean, we just kept meeting different volunteers and we helped each other through the obstacles and laughed together. It's just such a wonderful time and joy. I don't know. You don't get that roaming around the mall, right? If you think, well, I'm going to go be active. I'm going to do the mall. Okay.
What's better than sitting home doing nothing, but Oh, get up and go do some, go do a mud run. It's just so silly. And my girl is, they mean business when they talk about mud, they're giving you a real mud, so many mud pits. There were quite a few where you basically had to get almost fully submerged to get through the obstacles. So you go put your lips above the mud. So, so you weren't inhaling the mud, but hair, armpits, innards, everything was coated.
And I don't know, it just felt good. It felt weird, sometimes a little yucky, but it was great. It was so great. And I just had such the best time with Gracie and Tamara. And Tamara was supposed to reach out and share some photos that she and her mom took with me and she didn't. So, so Tamara, if you're listening, you owe me some and pictures of us, but we finished up. And then here's the deal. When you do a mud run, you got to go home. So how do you go home covered with mud?
And so you deal with that in a couple of ways. And I'm probably going to do a whole show or a larger portion of a show dedicated to that. But what they do is they put out rinsing stations. Almost all mud runs and obstacle course races do that. They know their participants are going to get filthy and they give us a little help before we get in our vehicle. And I had a rental car, so I specifically did not want to trash it. I brought towels from the hotel.
I brought some plastic bags and they had this plastic platform with holes in the bottom so we could go stand on it. They probably had about a hundred skinny little hoses with sprayers attached. So everybody could just get on that platform and start spraying yourself off. It's interesting. You think you're doing a good job spraying yourself off. You're I mean, you might be taking off 40% of the mud, but you really have no idea how much mud is.
Packed onto you or in you until you get home into your shower. So I do my best to rinse off as much as possible. I grab my stuff. I walk out of there like a cowboy because it's all sticky between my thighs. And then I get in my car to go back to my hotel. It's about a 45 minute drive along the way. I have to stop and get gas. So I have to go in the gas station, coated with mud, looking so cute. I didn't even realize it was splattered across my face like Braveheart.
So the cashier thought I was interesting. It's a little mud run. She was like, okay, whatever lady, bye. And then I had to pick up food before I went to my hotel because I didn't want to, I just didn't want to leave again. I thought once I get in that hotel room, I want to stay. So I stopped at a Qdoba, little casual Mexican food and just filthy, but who cares? I think if anyone looked at me, they probably didn't think I was a dirt person, right?
They probably didn't think I was a swamp woman who lived in the swamp, even though I kind of do. That was my lifestyle. I'm just filthy. They probably thought I went out and did something cool. So anyways, it took my filthy butt back to the hotel and then that's where the fun stuff happened. Cause I got in that hotel shower and I took off my clothes. I took off the clothes in the shower. So the clothes would get on the floor and I thought showers running these clothes will be clean.
45 minutes after standing in this shower, shower, I still had black water below me. It was just coming from everywhere. My hair, I'm not sure exactly where this mud got stuck in me, but it was a challenge getting clean. And it was very, very funny. I mean, because it's funny, right? It's just funny to be covered with mud. So I had a blast. Mud Girl has great photographers out on the course. I walked away with some really cool muddy pics.
Bill Dyer is the photographer from the Caribou Gun Club where we held the event. He took some nice work photos for me too, but it's just good times. If you are holding yourself back and you've never participated in an obstacle course race or a mud race, you got to do it. You got to do it. And you should come do it this fall with me. Ginger and I have been contracted to announce a whole bunch of Mud Girl events. She will be in Chicago, August 10th and and 11th the next weekend.
I will be in Colorado Springs. I think, sorry, I'm losing. I think September 21st, I'll be in Los Angeles. September 28th, I'll be in Southern California somewhere. I can't remember exactly where. October 5th, Ginger will be in Houston. I think October 19th, I'll be in Phoenix. And then November 16th, I'll be in San Diego. There might be another event I'm missing, but you can find that on fitness.com. My race announcing schedule is there, but we would love to see you.
If all you need is a friendly face, someone who already knows you and cares about you, well, you got it. So come do Mud Girl. It's mudgirlrun.us. That's the website. If you sign up, you get some noisy love. And while Minnesota was magnificent, I was happy to get back home to Gainesville and live my little life. I travel a lot, but I love being home. I hope when you're at home, you enjoy it. You find something wonderful to make.
It's something to make each day wonderful, right? For me, it's my dogs. It's the outdoors. It's my backyard. It's my guitar. It's my people. So home should be just as wonderful as away. It's nice to get away. It's nice to have a change of scenery and something fun to do. But it's also great to be home. And if it's not, make that change. Do whatever it takes to make your home environment a wonderful place for you to be. Okay. Where are we going with this?
Okay. I've got some questions that I would like to answer. I have my Hottie Body Fitness Challenge. It's my Facebook group. If you're not a part of it, you should be. It's Hottie Body Fitness Challenge. And it's a group where I have about 2000 people where I guide towards living better and longer through fitness and nutrition and quality sleep and so forth. But it's 2000 of the nicest people on earth, all supporting each other and keeping each other accountable, which is very effective.
So it's for free, join it. And I would love to make you a part of that. But I asked recently, I said, do you guys have any fitness questions? So Michael Jones, who's one of my poster board, poster boys, he's lost almost a hundred pounds with the exact formula for weight loss and turned his life around. He is, he's a dream come true, this guy. So Michael asked, what do I wish more adults knew about fitness? And is there one area where most adults are lacking in their fitness or workout
routine? What is it? And how can they improve it? You know, I think the... I think the thing that I wish more people knew about fitness is how simple, stupid it could be. I think too, I don't think I know, too many people are always looking for quick fixes or some dumb diet or spending money. If I buy this product, that'll help me get the weight off. You know, fitness doesn't have to be crazy or weird or expensive and you don't have to run a marathon. fitness really is very simple.
And if you put just a moderate, a modest amount of effort in daily, you can see huge results. You can be of ideal weight. There's nobody out there who's destined to be overweight, too bad, so sad. That's your fate. That's not true. If you are overweight and staying there, it's because you're doing the things. You're consuming too much food. You're moving too little. It's really simple science.
There's not too many anomalies to that situation. But yeah, I think too many adults believe that fitness is so complicated or fitness is so hard and they just can't. And that's tragic because life is short. We only get one that I know of. And if everybody just did the bare minimum, golly, they would live so much better. They would feel so much better. They would look so much better. Their professional life would be better.
Their personal relationships would be better. They might get 10 to 20 to 30 more years left on this earth. They may not get a horrible disease. I mean, golly, they could keep so much more of their money that they're not spending on the cost of being overweight or unfit. So that's what I wish. I wish more people had faith and more people listen to me and I could help break it down for them. That's what I think.
Okay. Deb wants to know how to get rid of bat wings. And so I love this woman. She is amazing. And she's just a class act. She's delightful and she's caring and she does put in effort. So she's talking about when underneath your armpits, your lat area and your arms, if they're sagging. So how do we get rid of that? Well, weight loss, right? If we want to shrink the area, we want to lose weight. You cannot shrink just a underarm or arm area.
You have to lose weight overall, right? You can't do anything particular to say, oh, I'm just going to slim down in my lats. Can't do that. When you lose weight, you lose weight from your head to your toe. It can come out off in all sorts of interesting places, from your feet to your face, to your armpits. It all could waste away as you you lose weight, which can be a good thing. Okay. So number one is shrinking the area.
Perhaps if there's extra fat in your arm or your back, that could be bulging, causing the problem. And then the thing you can do to tighten that area up is strength training. That particular area would be lat pull, lat pull down, rows, right? Working on your arms, working on that tricep. that is the area you want to target. And then the third place right there is excess skin.
So if you're someone who's lost a lot of weight, you might have some dangling skin there that's left over because you went from very large to very small and your skin couldn't make the full contractions. So at that point, either we say, yeah, can't fix it, or you bring a plastic surgeon into the picture. And that's really a personal call. So yeah, it's shrinking, shrinking the parts. If they have extra fat, you want to lose the weight.
You want to tighten them up with strength training, targeted strength training for your lats and your back and those arms. And then if it's just skin, skin can only be addressed at some point by a plastic surgeon. I don't have any formula for getting rid of that. Okay, I'm really excited to add this next segment to my show because I am very committed to the proper use of the English language. I think it's been butchered, it's been misused.
I think it's in a place where it shouldn't be and we can do better. I can do better. I'm always working on improving my own grammar and my own communication skills. And I think maybe it's something we can all do a little better on besides the fact that the Fitzen show is about health and fitness. It's about doing better and being better. When you are more clear with your messaging, then people trust you more. People believe you. People understand you.
And you just look a bit more intelligent. So why not go there? So this is the first thing I'm going to target today because I think it's a real effing crime. I think it's a real problem on society. It makes me sad and it's rampant. So the first grammar check I'd like to provide is reducing use of the word like when you are not expressing affection for something. So maybe you like horses. You could say, I like horses. You don't say, well, like, you know, like, I like horses. Like, I like to ride.
Like, I'd like to brush their hair. Like, I just like them. So frustrating. Do you know who's the greatest offender of that is people on reality TV, expressly those on The Bachelor. I don't watch that show. However, I see commercials and every single time I do, it drives me freaking batty. The word like should only be used to express affection or as a. Contrasts and similarities. This is like that, right? We don't just say like, like, like, like 20 times per minute and get away with it.
At least we should not, not if we want to be respected, not if we want people to take us seriously. And so I'm going to encourage you to work on that. First of all is acknowledging, first step is acknowledging you've got a problem. You might not have a problem, but I'm guessing the great majority of you do because I feel like most people So let's acknowledge that we have a problem. Start listening to yourself, listening to hear the word like come out of your mouth and how frequently it is.
You can start listening to your peers, to your family, to your coworkers, anyone around you. Start listening. And when you start focusing on their abuse and overuse of the word like, it will start to resonate more when you use it incorrectly. correctly. And I tell you what, I'm a forgiving person. I'm not saying you're a bad guy or a bad gal if you use the word like inappropriately over and over and over, ad nauseum. What I'm saying is this is a way to upgrade yourself, to improve,
and let's do better. Grammar is actually quite important. It's funny, when we write it, we can use grammarly or other tools to correct our words. When it comes out of our mouth, we don't have those tools to just undo the stupid of things we've said. So it's a good idea to improve no matter how old we are. Can we get better? Can we do better? I think so. And so start listening, start listening to those around you. It may start to drive you crazy when you realize how much people abuse and overuse
this word. And then you got to start targeting yourself. And so this is a drill I do with my interns. I host interns from the University of Florida almost every semester for the past 12 or so years. And I had one intern who, well, actually I had four interns signed up for the spring. That was plenty for my small company. And when the spring began, one of my interns reached out and said, hey, one of my buddies, he's in the same program, his internship fell through.
Do you have any room for him? And the truth is I did not have any room for this person. I didn't have room for anybody, but I thought, well, it's a fellow Gator. Go ahead and give him my phone number. We'll have a phone call. And so this young man calls me and he plays Gator football. He's got a lot going for him. He gets on the phone and all I hear is like, I ask him questions about. Who he is, what he likes to do, what his professional skills are.
And all I hear are like, like, like, like, like, I knew nothing about him when we were done because I couldn't get past the atrocious abuse of the word like. And so what I decided there is not to reject him because he spoke like a moron. What I decided to do was protect the dignity of the University of Florida by bringing him on board and teaching him better. And so this young man came on board and I would do this drill with all five of my interns.
I said, okay, we're going to sit around this table and I'm going to give you topics that are easy for you. Something that you know without having to do any research. Tell me about your best friend. Tell me about your pet. Tell me about your favorite vacation spot. Something that anybody could speak comfortably on. and all I ask you to do is speak for 60 seconds without abusing the word like.
And so I'd give them a simple topic and they'd start speaking and inevitably, one of them would go, um, like, and I'd go, argh, I'd make the buzzer sound with my scary voice and startle them and I'd make them start over. I'd say, okay, 60 second timer, it's back on, let's go. And sometimes it would take 30 minutes for the five of them to get through each doing 60 seconds of speaking concisely and thoughtfully without using the word like or abusing the word like.
And it turned out to be the most impactful drill I could have given because what they had to do is slow down and think. And I believe what happens when people use the word like and other filler words or sounds like um and ah, they're just trying to hold court. These are people that are. They're desperate to get their point across and they believe that if they stop making noise, the other person will interject and they don't want to lose the audience.
So they keep sounds coming out of their mouth, no matter how foolish they sound, just to hold onto their audience. And that's probably why I've done it in the past. I mean, I think I was turned on by the Valley Girls in the 80s and I wanted to sound like them. And then all of a sudden I thought, oh, geez, I sound like an idiot. I got to stop this. And I worked on it. And so worked on it with those interns for the entire semester. And then they became thoughtful speakers. They didn't just ramble.
They thought before they spoke. And here's the thing is they would allow for moments of silence as they thought. And I think moments of silence can be incredibly powerful when people stop talking because there's others around them perk up and listen. Listen, when I am on a stage, when I am doing keynote presentations, I use silence as a weapon. I weaponize silence because it really is an attention grabber.
So I want you to know that if you pause to think, to find the right word, to clarify your message inside your head, it's not only not bad, it's good. It's a good choice to make when you are communicating. And so perhaps you do this drill. You go for 60 seconds, get your spouse or your bestie or a coworker or a neighbor and say, can we do this 60 second drill together? I am trying to improve my, my grammar, my speaking style, right?
I don't know if grammar is the proper word to use, but yeah, I'm trying to be a better communicator and I could use help with this drill. You and a friend pair up and go back and forth and then. Challenge yourself to be aware of yourself and expand the drill to two minutes and to three minutes and so forth. Maybe you joined Toastmasters. Toastmasters is this excellent public speaking club. It's an organization that's worldwide. I think it's cost $20 per year to be a member of.
I joined Toastmasters when I was in first grade. My gifted teacher had us all do Toastmasters and we learned so much about making presentations. I actually base my keynote presentations off of the formula I learned in first grade. And when you're in Toastmasters, your peers in the club will help you remove ohms and ahs and likes. They will count those as you make small presentations and they will help you upgrade your speaking style. You can do Toastmasters at usually your local library.
There's clubs in every town near you. You can also do them online via Zoom, but I highly recommend Toastmasters. Again, you may not want to be a public speaker. Okay, fine. Don't. But at some point, you may stand up in front of a group at a funeral or at a wedding or, in a meeting at work or at the PTA, and your ability to speak coherently will, may, I should say, may be the difference between people taking you seriously and people not taking you seriously.
And it doesn't matter how many credentials you have and how much experience you have. If you sound like a bozo because you like, like, like all the time, then you may not be getting all the things you want. So that's my first grammar lesson. I'm really excited to get that out there. Totally pumped because I believe in speaking concisely. I'm a nerd, but I think it will benefit you. So I'm glad I'm doing this. There's more to come each time I do a podcast.
I'm hoping to include a little grammar lesson, a little speaking tip. And yeah, I hope you enjoy them. If you have pet peeves or things that you need to work on, send them my way and I'll include them in the show. Song of the week. Are you ready for it? This is submitted online. I have a place at fitsness.com where anyone can submit a song of the week. Tavia Lopez from Kuna says her favorite song is by Prince. That's right.
Prince, Baby I'm a Star, which I think is an awesome song. It is upbeat and exciting and fun. And she says she loves Prince. She grew up listening to him with her mom and the song is upbeat and it makes her want to dance. It makes her happy. And so let's go back to Prince Baby I'm a Star. And you need to put that on your playlist this week while you're working out, whether you are walking the dogs or you are playing rugby or you are doing gymnastics
or whatever type of workout you are doing. Prince Baby I'm a Star. And oh, by the way, following up on the Minnesota talk. I've been through the Minneapolis airport quite a few times this year and they have a Prince store. They have an entire store in Minneapolis airport dedicated to Prince and they've got great videos going on and all sorts of paraphernalia and fun stuff for you to buy.
And you know, I say, you know, as if you do know, I'm guessing, you know, lots of people know, but he was born and raised in Minneapolis and I think that's where he lived his life and aunt died there. So yeah, Prince, baby, I'm a star. That is a fantastic recommendation. Tavia, thank you so much. The rest of you, if you haven't done so yet, please leave a review on the app, wherever you are, Spotify. ITunes, Amazon, Google Chrome, Podbean, whatever.
Just get on the app and give all the stars and say something nice. And that'll make me happy because I love when I see your names pop up. Other than that, all I need you to do is get to work. I love you. 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 give 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 Koehler 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.