Perfect is Boring, Movement is Everything with Fitz Koehler

Today's guest is Fitz Koehler, a fitness professional, author of the Cancer Comeback series, and race announcer. Fitz discusses her role in major U.S. marathons, making fitness fun, and integrating physical, emotional, and spiritual health. She shares advice on wealth management, emphasizing debt avoidance and personal satisfaction. Fitz delves deep into her personal battle with cancer, underscoring the importance of fitness during hardships. She advocates for staying active even while sick, provides practical exercise tips, promotes a straightforward weight loss formula, and touches on the psychological aspects of living with cancer.

Live better and longer with Fitzness! https://www.fitzness.com/blog/

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:42

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay, and today Fitz Kohler joins us. Fitz is a fitness pro, the author of multiple books, including the Cancer Comeback series, and is a professional race announcer. You can learn more about Fitz at Fitzness. com. Welcome Fitz! Hey, Magic. Thanks for having me on your show. I am so glad you're here. I have been really looking forward to this interview, but tell me, race announcer, what's that about?

Fitz Koehler: 1:21

Well, I host some of the largest, most iconic, Running events in the United States, so Los Angeles Marathon, Buffalo Marathon, Big Sur Marathon, some of these real behemoths, and I host over 30 a year, and my job is to get the runners engaged, informed, entertained. We have a lot of fun at the start line, and then I whip them into a frenzy and yell, go, and they came. take off to do their distance, whether they're doing one mile, three mile, half marathon or full marathon. And then I'm at the finish line to make sure every last one of them feels like a champion when they cross that finish line. So it's a lot of fun and I get to work with the best people in the world. It's fantastic.

Magic Barclay: 2:03

That sounds fun, definitely. All right. Talking of fun, we like to try and keep this podcast a little bit fun. And I ask everyone the same three questions. And the reason I do that is everyone's answers are completely different. And I feel it really does help. Us uplift in three particular topics that sometimes aren't fun. So the first one is what can your expertise do to accelerate health? Not just physical, but also emotional and spiritual health.

Fitz Koehler: 2:36

Yeah. So not only do I help people live better and longer by making fitness understandable, attainable and fun. But, uh, thanks to my own experience is. teach lessons in mental fortitude. It's when you combine a fit body with a strong mind with a can do attitude, one that doesn't make excuses, one that doesn't talk yourself down. Instead, you talk yourself up, boy, you will be unstoppable. So that's, that's what I'm all about. That's what I have to offer.

Magic Barclay: 3:07

I love that. Now, something I've noticed, I love working out, but if you ask me to run on a treadmill, I would rather eat my own arm off, but give me some weights. And if I can smash my own personal best, I'm such a happy camper. I've noticed a lot of the fitness industry still to this day. You know, push people. Like if you're not going to vomit and everything hurt the next day, then you haven't done it right. Fitness needs to be fun. It needs to be attainable and it needs to be something that you're looking forward to. How do you help people make it fun?

Fitz Koehler: 3:46

So it's not about what I like to do. It's about what they like to do. And you're right. So many people say, I hate running. I can't running. Okay, well then do something else. It's not about doing what I do. but you should pursue the four pillars of fitness. And so cardiovascular. Fitness, strength, flexibility and balance. And those can come in all sorts of way. You know, for example, I like yoga moves, but boy, am I irritated when some. Caucasian instructor says namaste to me and starts talking about all these, using all these stupid words that are just unnecessary. Let's talk about stretching. So yoga irritates me, but I'll take a real vigorous stretching class or, body flow. And so it's, it's, it's. Avoid the things you don't like. Do the things you do. If you don't like to run, fine, go swimming, go dancing, cycle, jump on a pogo stick. I don't care. Do the things that you like. Just make sure you huff puff, grunt, wince and wobble, strength, cardio, flexibility, and balance. Not so complicated.

Magic Barclay: 4:44

Oh my goodness. I just spat out my structured water as you said that. That is hilarious and I love it. Thank you. Our next question is around wealth. Again, another possibly dry topic for some, but wealth isn't just financial. It's also personal and emotional wealth. So what are your top three tips to creating wealth?

Fitz Koehler: 5:07

Um, well, I'm actually going to hit money because I think it's very important not to owe anybody anything. Almost ever, um, money owing people money gives me a stomach ache. So my home is paid off. My vehicles are paid off. I don't owe anybody anything. And that a allows you to build what build wealth because when you're not paying your mortgage down every year or every month or your car payments, you can take that money and put it in the bank. And then when your refrigerator breaks, you're You have money to fix it. My dog was just in the hospital last week. Oh my God. It was so expensive, but the money was there. So I do think, uh, don't spend more money than you make and save up and pay things off, and then you could really have financial wealth. Now, the other thing comes is, you know, satisfaction in the things that you do and satisfaction with the people that you're with, and if, if you can find joy in. Uh, your daily tasks or hobbies and then, uh, joy with being surrounded by wonderful people. That's, that's where wealth kicks in.

Magic Barclay: 6:09

Love it. Okay. The final standard question. It's the big one. It's around weight loss and have you ever battled your weight? If so, how did you win the war? What can you offer the listeners who might be on this journey? Also recognizing that stress is a major driving force here.

Fitz Koehler: 6:29

Yeah. So I actually was an overweight teenager with an eating disorder. I had bulimia, which wasn't a lot of fun. Um, I was very active. I actually started teaching fitness at 15. So I was teaching multiple fitness classes a week, playing soccer, running, doing all sorts of things. But our eating habits were a mess. And instead of Learning how to eat properly. I was like everybody else and I tried all sorts of really dumb diets and dumb pills and dumb powders and anything with the word weight loss attached to it is really a scam if you're paying for it. So I failed in those ways. But once I went to the University of Florida to get my master's in exercise and sports sciences because I decided to make a career. Out of fitness. I started expanding my horizons by reading journals and learning. And what I learned is that on average, the human body burns about 10 calories per pound of body weight per day. And I had that light bulb go off in my head and I thought, well, it can't be that simple. And it is. And so, um, I've engineered it as the exact formula for weight loss. And people can, if you visit fitness. com, it's a block on the very front of the. website. And if you click exact formula for weight loss, you can read it in depth. But virtually, if you weigh 200 pounds, you're burning about 2000 calories a day. Now, if you want to stay that weight, you keep eating 2000 calories a day. And then you even out if you want to gain weight, you eat more than 2000 calories a day. If you like to lose weight, you eat less. In fact, you can pinpoint target your weight. Let's say you want to weigh 150 pounds. Your caloric budget would be 1500 calories, and eventually you, if you eat that much every day, your body will eventually shrink down to that size, and this really only works, well, that's a lie, you could lose a ton of weight eating horrible food, but that's not the way to go because that will lead to hunger and stress and frustration and your body will shut down. But if you fill your caloric budget up with mostly nutritious food and have a little bit of wiggle room for the fun stuff, whatever that means to you, whether it's a beer or some chocolate or some chips, then you'll achieve your ideal weight and you can stay there. So weight loss is not that complicated. I vehemently oppose all the snake oil salesmen in the fitness industry that are selling weight loss products. Every last one of them are lies. And, um, I, I know everyone's familiar with Oprah Winfrey, the most wealthy woman in the world. And if there was a weight loss product that worked, she would still be in those very sexy Calvin Klein jeans. She wore on her show 20 years ago, but weight loss requires discipline knowledge. And, um, great daily choices. So that's what I have to offer on fitness. It's not very complicated. Don't spend your hard earned money on scams. Just learn to eat the right amount of the right food for the size you want to be.

Magic Barclay: 9:23

Love it. Now let's go through that calculator again. Yeah. So if you weigh, say 180 pounds, how many calories do you need to have?

Fitz Koehler: 9:35

Well, if you want to stay there, that's 1800 calories. So, you know, it's 180 pounds times 10. So that's your caloric. That's, that's what you burn on an average day. And when I say burn calories, this is you just going about your business. This is you, uh, waking up, walking around your house, walking to the office, brushing your teeth, pumping blood through your body. You know, every move we make requires energy. And so on average, Per pound of body weight, you're burning about 10 calories per pound per day. So if you weigh 180 pounds and you would like to stay there, 1, 1800 calories is exactly what you want to put in your body. That's food and beverage. If you'd like to be smaller, you choose a lower caloric budget and go for that. And it's, it takes a while, right? So if you go into your house and you, it's a hot summer day and your house is really hot because the air has not been on, maybe you've been on vacation. You walk in and you'll hit the thermostat. Maybe you put it to 78 degrees. Your house doesn't poof become 78 degrees. What'll happen is if you turn the thermostat to 78, your AC starts doing the work and eventually your temperature turns to 78 degrees. And that's exactly what this formula does. If you're, if you're 180 pounds and you'd prefer to weigh one 50. Drop your caloric budget down to 1500 calories every day. You can track it with an app, you can track it with pen and paper, but eventually your body will start shrinking because you're not giving it enough calories to sustain its 180 pound size and it will Eventually dropped down to, 150. It's really, I mean, it's so simple. It's insane to me how people spend billions of dollars every year on, um, complicating this very simple formula.

Magic Barclay: 11:25

Now we've touched on a fair bit, but now I open the floor to you Fitz. What are some things that you feel the listeners need to hear? We've already had some fairly groundbreaking, information from you, but I know you've got more. Tell us.

Fitz Koehler: 11:41

Yeah, so one of my real hot topics right now, which I'm doing a lot of keynotes and speaking about is health during hardship because, you know, it's important to be healthy on the good days, right? But when things hit the fan, when someone gets sick, when someone gets injured, sometimes the entire family unit gives up on health and fitness. And that's really when we need to lean in to health and fitness because a. It's a fantastic way to manage stress, um, but health and fitness is really how you rebuild and recover after illness or injury. So, me living my very best life as a fitness pro and an athlete in 2019, I, was diagnosed with breast cancer seven weeks after a clean mammogram. And so that's a real, crazy way to uproot your life and make things difficult, right? And If my family was like most every other family, I would have said, Oh, well, I'm sick. I have to just stay in bed the whole time. And my husband would have given up on exercise just to take care of me. But we knew how valuable health and fitness was. And so, uh, my commitment to strength and cardio and flexibility and balance and nutrition Allowed me not only to not stay in bed the whole time, even though I was very, very sick. I mean, there's no getting around the fact that the toxic combination of drugs they gave me was horrific. but even while violently ill for five months at first, and then another 10 months, I was sick in a different way. I was still able to travel all across America almost every weekend, announcing races, hosting about a million people. So what I want people to know is. Lean in. If you get hit by a bus, okay, well, you're going to use exercise to rebuild your body to repair, right? Strength and flexibility and balance and cardio. It all matters. If you're sick, this matters. And especially for cancer patients know that exercise and quality nutrition will make you more likely to reach remission. That's where they say cancer free exercise and nutrition. There's plenty of studies to show that these are valuable tools and getting you across that finish line, as well as. Helping you prevent recurrence. And so, magic. I know. I hope none of your listeners have cancer. I hope 0 percent of them have cancer. But every single one of them loves someone with cancer. And so when they think about, gosh, I wish I could help my mom, my sister, my buddy, who's been diagnosed with colon cancer, brain cancer, whatever it is. Um, I've created new books. I have. Uh, the Cancer Comeback series of books, Your Healthy Cancer Comeback, Sick to Strong. That one is a blueprint to hold the hand of a person that is newly diagnosed, help them exercise, eat right, get the quality rest, use the complementary care, through all sorts of treatment, and then rebuild their body after. So that's Your Healthy Cancer Comeback. There's the Healthy Cancer Comeback journal. goes along with it. And then my memoir is my noisy cancer comeback. But, uh, but yeah, when things go wrong, it's more important than ever for you to focus on your fitness.

Magic Barclay: 14:49

Definitely. And I know when I had cancer going to the gym, even though I couldn't do Most of the stuff that I used to do, just being there, being in that atmosphere and just even lifting small dumbbells was just enough to keep me going and give me something to strive for, because I would look at the heavyweights on the squat rack and I would say, you know what? Guys, one day you're mine again, one day. And so once I started getting my energy back and recovering, you know, it was just so great being able to lift. I couldn't lift what I had, but just being able to lift, like I love resistance training. So definitely, you know, definitely. Do not sit in bed going, Oh, my life is in the toilet cause I have cancer. It does suck. It is a really sucky thing to be sick with it. Let's just say that.

Fitz Koehler: 15:44

But

Magic Barclay: 15:44

you know what? Get off the couch, get off the bed and go and do something. Even if it's just go for a walk, just go and do something because your body will definitely thank you for it.

Fitz Koehler: 15:54

Yeah, and you're right. It's not about being who you used to be. I mean, I'm not who I was in high school, right? Thank goodness for that. But it's what can you do today and can you push the needle forward? So two things, for those who say, no, you must rest the whole time. Well, someone who does nothing but rest, their muscles will atrophy that rest. encourages, you know, some sort of healing, but it all eventually encourages decline, your muscles will atrophy, your flexibility will diminish you. That may mean your, your person's less mobile. You know, you lose balance. What happens when we lose balance? We fall down, you know, stamina goes away. And again, things are so hard with cancer. Often chemo makes it hard to walk from your front door to the car. And so every bit of help you can get is, it's just vital. It just, um, All of it matters. All of it matters. And you're right. It's, it's, it's about doing what you can. And so within your healthy cancer comeback, I have chapter seven is massive and it's got all sorts of photos with instructions, but maybe there's a hundred or so photos of regular exercises to do with bands and dumbbells and body weight. But then, okay, let's say you can't stand because whatever reason you're sitting in a chair, here's dozens of exercises you can do in a chair. And then there's a whole section of exercises. You can do in bed because you can stretch and do strength training in bed. And then if you're like me and you're sick all the time, there's a shower and here's a whole bunch of exercises or stretches you can do in the shower. And that was really. Such a magical place for me because again, I was very sick. So I was constantly jumping in the shower and I would turn on either my favorite music or I would turn on the comedian, Jerry Seinfeld on YouTube. I would just find any Jerry Seinfeld standup show or, or interview. And I would listen to him while I was in the shower stretching. And it just, it made me better. If all I did was stay in bed, uh, I really would have taken a much greater turn for the worse.

Magic Barclay: 18:00

And I just want to touch on, you said that your family supported you, your husband supported you. Not long after I started this podcast, I interviewed a very good friend of mine who has metastasized breast cancer. And you know, something that this early episode, I believe it might've been episode 10 of this podcast, something we discussed was don't Look at your friend or your loved one with cancer and think, I'm never going to invite them to something because they're going to say no, or I'm never going to invite them because they don't have the energy. Allow people to still live their lives, even though they might have cancer. Life doesn't stop unless you allow it to. And so all this episode was about was, Hey. You don't have to tiptoe around us. You don't have to not mention the big C word. You don't have to think that we're fragile. Let us live our lives. Give us something to go on with. And, you know, I just wanted to remind the listeners that episode is there because if you know someone with cancer or you have cancer yourself, it's not the end. It's another journey. It's another fork in the road. If, as soon as you make it the end, then it becomes the end.

Fitz Koehler: 19:18

Well, you are so right. And I talk about this in my noisy cancer comeback is, uh, I had this one day about halfway through my treatment where I woke up and it was just one of my worst days for for a variety of reasons. Things were horrible with me. And that morning I had that revelation that now I understand why people discontinue treatment. Right. I was so sick. If, if I wasn't promised a cure and that was the best I was ever going to feel, I finally understood why someone would say no more, I'm done. Just leave me alone and I will spend the rest of my days doing whatever. But on that same day, even though I was in the toilet, everything was so bad. I went to watch my daughter compete at a cheerleading competition. My, she was 15 at the time. Even though I was a, I was just a mess, I was so happy to be there watching her, watching her team, enjoying all of the other teams competing. And that was another big moment for me where I thought, you know what, if I was dying right now. This is still where I would want to be. And so if you have a loved one who only has three more weeks left on this earth, perhaps allow them, encourage them to live every day. Uh, I don't, I don't subscribe to this hideout, bubble up, wear a mask, you know, that Isolate. I think isolation is horrible for not only our bodies, but our our psyche. And so you are right. Magic. If you're if you're going through it, get out, go through it and find for some joy and entertainment into your life. And if you love someone who's going through it, get out. By all means, and I'll encourage them to live all of their days as well as they can.

Magic Barclay: 21:12

Very much so. Now, before we let you go Fitz, we love freebies. What can you offer the listeners and where can they find it?

Fitz Koehler: 21:21

Oh, Fitsness. com is jammed with freebies. And so I think the most important thing to go there is the exact formula for weight loss, but I also have an arsenal of workout videos that are all free. Free. Some are long, some are really short and efficient, but yeah, fitsness. com is jam packed with resources to help strangers far and wide get fit with no fee. So, um, I hope everyone stops by and uses some of them.

Magic Barclay: 21:56

Fantastic. So, you are at Fitsness, F I T Z N E S S dot com and everywhere on socials at Fitsness. Fits, thanks for joining us. I've really loved having you on. Thanks, Maggie. Good to meet ya. You too. And listeners, thank you for your time. Get out, move your body, live your life and create your magical life.