My Noisy Cancer Comeback: How Fitz Koehler Overcame Adversity

00:00:00 – Speaker A

00:00:02 – Speaker B
Good day and welcome to Giveaheck. On today’s show, I welcome Fitz Koehler. Fitz is among the most predominant and compelling fitness experts and race announcers in America. With a master’s degree in exercise and sports sciences and decades of experience teaching fitness worldwide, fitz has helped countless people live better and longer by making fitness understandable attainable and fun. As the CEO of Fitness International, she masterfully uses every form of mass media to lead people toward health and athletic adventure. In 2019, Fitz was diagnosed with breast cancer and her healthy and athletic body was brutalized by 15 months of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgeries. Instead of shutting down, she turned the volume up on her career. She also strategically orchestrated her own healthy cancer comeback from a sick, scrawny and weak to a strong Boston Marathon finisher. Her memoir, My Noisy Cancer Comeback, running at the Mouth While Running for My Life, was released in 2020 and has been a massive source of motivation for those facing hardships of all sorts. This shares inspirational lessons from her cancer crushing whirlwind in her Keynote presentations, convincing global audiences that they can do hard things too. I’d like to welcome you to the show. Fitz, thanks so much for agreeing to come on and share with us some of your life journey.

00:01:41 – Speaker A
Well, thanks Dwight, and I definitely do give a heck, so I’m excited to talk to you.

00:01:47 – Speaker B
That’s awesome. At the end of the day, if more people give a heck, we’d have such a better world, right?

00:01:53 – Speaker A
It’s a simple concept like don’t be a jerk, be nice.

00:01:57 – Speaker B
Yeah, be kind. Be kind. Right. That’s my message. We hear that whole adage and we get that all the time. It’s in music and stuff. Kill them with kindness. Well, it’s true.

00:02:10 – Speaker A
I find it very easy. I find it very easy. You know, it’s funny, when I grew up, my mom, she put a lot of fight into us. It was fight to get your way and fight, fight, fight. And if somebody wrongs, you go to the media and stuff. And then when I was about 18, I went to the University of Florida. I left home, I went 5 hours away. And it was through my living with and amongst strangers that I learned to catch more bees with honey. I would get along much better in the world if I were nice. And yeah, I like being nice. It’s rewarding to be nice. It just feels better to be nice. So I’ll take you down if you hurt my kids. There’s a few things I’m willing to go to the mat for.

00:02:54 – Speaker B
Mama bear is going to hurt you. Kindness is good, though. Kindness is good. It’s what we should all be focused on. So you shared a little bit, but one of the things that I focus on, as I mentioned before I hit record, is that I focus on a person’s origin story from their earliest recollections. And the reason I mentioned this again, is because I do get new listeners that come on. And the reason I focus on origin is it helps the listener and myself be able to know, like, and trust somebody more. Because the more vulnerable we can be with people, the more they can put themselves into your shoes and understand that maybe, hey, things aren’t so bad. Look what that person’s achieved. Look what they’ve gone through. So, Fitz, do me a favor and share with me your origin story, whatever you feel comfortable with from your earliest recollections to where you are currently today.

00:03:46 – Speaker A
Okay, well, I’ll go through what I think might be the highlights. Low lights without boring folks to death. But I was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so it was a great gift of being a native floridian. Grew up on the beach, barefoot, very scrappy. Makeup wasn’t part of the agenda when you were a teenager. We were very earthy and beachy and sweaty. I have two siblings. My parents, they’re married, but they divorced for a few years right after my birth. And I have my brother is nine years older than me, John. He’s the greatest on earth. I have a sister who’s six years older than me. She’s a successful school teacher, but she wasn’t very nice to me. So it was one of those things where my mom was doing our best. We were, I would say, blue collar, middle class, and our biggest vacations were to Disney World and Florida. Things we didn’t get on a plane and go anywhere fancy, but we didn’t need for much. I was taught the beauty of earning money. As a little one, my parents would give us chores and we’d earn allowance based on dusting or sweeping. My dad had a business, and we’d go clean his office, simple stuff like dusting and sweeping and make a little money. We were always in sports, so I did everything cheering and soccer and T ball and baseball and you name it. Speed skating. I did it. In fact, one of my first jobs was kind of a precursor to what I do today, is I was the birthday clown at the skating rink. So my job was to skate on over to the table, deliver the pizza and hot dogs, deliver the birthday cake, and then I would lead the hokey pokey in my clown costume in the middle of the skating rink. And that’s not very far off from what I do professionally now. And then when those skating sessions were over, I had to go clean the bathroom. So I learned pretty early that I should do something that gets me away from scrubbing toilets. But, yeah, just basic upbringing. We were scrappy. None of the kids in my high school had too much. Everyone was fed and had a safe place to sleep. But we were scrappy. And we fought and we drink too early and we skipped school sometimes. I was a gifted kid. So I was one of the higher achievers. Went to college at US and started building my business then.

00:06:14 – Speaker B
So you’ve had good, bad and the ugly. You’ve had trials and tribulations like we all have had. But you were also a person that, as you mentioned, you’re a high achiever. You were tenacious and understood that you didn’t want to clean toilets, which I work for my parents and their business. And I was basically told, you know what? You want stuff, you got to go out and work for it, right? We got to give you shelter, food, and we’re going to give you love. Anything beyond that, you need to figure it out. I quickly learned the things I like doing, just as you were mentioning, and things I didn’t like doing. And what can I do to not have to do that again? Like the toilet clean, because I had to do that for my dad’s business, too. Go clean the employees toilet was the worst for the mechanics.

00:06:59 – Speaker A
Oh, yeah, I bet.

00:07:01 – Speaker B
So earning allowance, earning money, and doing whatever you needed to do, that’s really, when you start your journey, is back. Like, even being the clown at the rank and doing that sort of stuff, it taught you that you needed to work hard, you needed to push forward all the way to going to U of F and starting your journey to where you are today. It all focuses on our work ethic from when we’re a kid, which we either learn on our own or we learn through pattern teaching from our parents. So thanks for sharing that.

00:07:42 – Speaker A
Yeah, it’s funny, the thing I didn’t mention is when I was 14, it’s when I started teaching fitness. I’d gone.

00:07:48 – Speaker B
Really?

00:07:50 – Speaker A
I made Cinnabuns at the mall, if you’re familiar with Cinnabuns.

00:07:53 – Speaker B
Yeah, I am.

00:07:54 – Speaker A
Oh, my gosh. And boy, did I eat those in the back of the office a lot. But I had a really mean manager and I wanted to leave there. And I had had knee surgery from a soccer injury, and I started working out at the gym and I thought it was great fun. I love being there, so I applied at the gym. I started building my fitness career at 1415. And it was great. It was great. My mom was a superstar hard worker. My dad was a prescription drug addict. And so that also was a big influencer because where I would have some beers with my friends, I never smoked a joint, I never took a pill, I never popped anything. I saw what it did to him and what it did to us, and I decided, hell no on drugs. So I know alcohol can also be horrible, but it kept me drug free, watching my dad be an idiot, that’s for sure. So that was another little influencer there. But I started becoming who I am pretty early on.

00:08:58 – Speaker B
Well, yeah, at 14 years of age, most people aren’t thinking about that. I know my son, who’s now just turned 24, around 1314. I got him into CrossFit because before I started having health issues, I used to love doing CrossFit and got him introduced to that. But when I had to quit, he didn’t have the drive to continue on himself, which was unfortunate. But yeah. Fitness at a young age teaches you tenacity, it teaches you dedication, it teaches you, if you’re serious enough about it, nutrition. So you probably learned some things about nutrition, keeping your temple clean, your body. Right? And obviously, your dad being a prescription pill popper, that had to be a profound impact on you, seeing him maybe not understanding how much of a crutch it was for him, but it does. We have a choice in life. We’re either going to follow the pattern, teaching from our parents to become into the same addictive things they do, whether it’s not even addiction just to drugs, alcohol, it can be addictions to being miserable and sad, right?

00:10:09 – Speaker A
You know what? There’s a lot of things that you can learn from your parents by saying, I like the way they’re doing it. I want to do that too. And then there’s things you learn and say, I will never do that. And not only did it steer me clear from drugs, but I used to beg him. I was a little kid, and I would say, dad, just choose us over the drugs. You choose these drugs every day. Choose us instead. And he would say no. And so I don’t believe in this whole victim mentality. All these people are like, I can’t I can’t help it’s somebody else. I’m failing because of them. I’m not achieving because of them. Baloney. You have control over you. If you haven’t gotten to where you want to be yet, that’s your fault. Figure it out. And it’s only once you own your own failures. Let’s say you don’t have the job of your dreams or a great relationship. Stop blaming the other person. Own it. Say, okay, this is me. I have failed. And once you have full ownership of your failures, then you can fully own your success, right? You can say, no, I’m in charge of me. I’m going to make this happen. I’m going to stay later. I’m going to show up earlier. I’m going to learn more. I’m going to practice more. I’m going to be a kinder boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whatever it is. Looking at him, I was like, he’s just not choosing us. And so making choices, clear choices, and following through has been very important to me, and I don’t really feel myself much.

00:11:31 – Speaker B
That’s perfect, though. What we tell ourselves is based on reflections from our parents with pattern teachings. But we can reprogram ourself. It doesn’t matter. Whoever’s listening or watching this, you can change your life today, right now. I don’t care what age you are. That old adage. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That’s garbage. You simply tell yourself to stay, to be stuck, right?

00:12:00 – Speaker A
Yeah, that’s right. And then you’re just going to be burdening everybody with your stuckness, right? Because it’s those miserable people who love to share, oh, I’m so sad I’ve not broke up again. Okay, well, you’ve been through ten partners and none of it are working out. Maybe you’re to own or I gained another ten pounds. Okay, dummy, stop eating all the extra food that’s putting the weight on you. And dummy, I think that’s a nice word. I’m not really picking, but yeah, it’s the lack of ownership. I think some people prefer to be the victim. They love the story, they love the drama, and that’s just not me. That’s just not me. I can’t stomach it. I can’t be that way. So I’m not perfect by any means, but there are certain things that I’m the consequence of a drug addicted parent, and I could be the other kind of consequence, right, where I’m like, I do drugs because my dad did drugs, and people go, oh, poor girl, her dad did drugs, so she did drugs instead. I go, you know what? My dad did drugs. I’m not doing that. I’m not letting anything stand between me and my kids or me and my career and me and my health. So, yeah, the origin story, it’s okay. It’s all right.

00:13:22 – Speaker B
We have to own our origin, the associations that we keep or we have in our life, to not just people, to what we watch, what we listen to, to everything can feed victim mentality. People talk about the fact that they have a bad day, and I’ll say to them, well, did you have anything go good today? Well, wait a minute, you woke up today. Did you have gratefulness for the fact that you have another shot, another opportunity in life? What’s your perspective of your day? And they’ll say, well, you must have bad days. I said, I used to. I’ve conditioned myself now for over five years to not have a bad day. I have bad moments, and I have specific things that I do to change that course in my day so that I don’t have bad days. I have bad moments. And then I look at who am I associating with? Why am I feeling like this? Am I hanging out with people that are drug addicted or sad addicted or boohoo woohoo addicted? Well, guess what? Like attracts like. You sometimes have to do the uncomfortable, and you have to break those chains. And sometimes it’s family. I got family I don’t communicate with. I see them once in a while, but we don’t communicate because they’re what is that, debbie Downer or whatever they call it always sad. And I’m very upbeat, and it’s just like, you know what? No more energy vampires in my life.

00:14:55 – Speaker A
Yeah, those are people that I wish them well, but I’m not going to let them rain on my parade. Bring me down. I have a relative. Well, it’s my sister. She’s just my whole childhood, she would say repeatedly, you’re fat and you suck at soccer. That was her mantra to me. She was six years older. I thought she was pretty. I thought she was fabulous. I wanted to be like her. She just put me down all the time. You’re fat and you suck at soccer. And then we would go to the beach and I’d wear a big T shirt, and she would say, Why are you wearing a T shirt? You look stupid. And I was like, well, you’ve been telling me I’m fat. And she was like, no, you’re not fat. Take off your T shirt. And I was like, constant. And then what?

00:15:36 – Speaker B
Mixed messages, right?

00:15:38 – Speaker A
And I was ten or eight or twelve. And then when she grew up, I expected that she would be a nice adult. And then she still is kind of mean. And it was when my kids were two and four, probably, where I just decided, can’t let them watch somebody else treat me this way. I cannot allow this behavior at myself because they will learn that it’s okay for people to mistreat them. And so my sister, I wish her well. I will be cordial when we’re together, but I will not let her be a part of my life where she can disrespect me and be very mean. I don’t expect to be held up on some sort of platform either. I’m just like a regular gal, right? But she’s so horribly mean, and I don’t ever want my children to allow anyone to treat them so horribly. So we don’t engage, and that’s just fine. I don’t have any respect for bloodline. I have respect for people who have respect.

00:16:34 – Speaker B
Oh, absolutely. And sadly, as you mentioned, she give mixed messages, and she’s the same way as an adult, maybe some ways worse, but thank goodness you don’t have to experience that. But we make a decision. People that are listening, watching, we make a decision to climb on the hamster wheel of life, and we can make a decision how to get off of it and realizing that sometimes we need to check our reality and reframe things because we can easily climb back on. And you can treat life like a buffet. If you go to a buffet, you don’t eat everything there. You might find something you don’t like, and that could be a person in your life, and you don’t.

00:17:14 – Speaker A
It’s a great analogy. Great analogy.

00:17:17 – Speaker B
So I push that away, and then there’s things I like at the buffet, and I go get second helpings. I satiate myself because I treat people like that too. The energy. Vampires, you stay. That’s a bitter dish I don’t want. And you oh, wow. And it’s based on a 70 30 principle. 70% of the time, if I’m talking to Fitz, I better feel warm and fuzzy when Fitz is walking away and I’m genuinely say, I can’t wait to see you again. Maybe I hug Fitz. You’re such an amazing person, I can’t wait to see you again. 30% of the time, Fitz. I don’t necessarily agree with Fitz, but she doesn’t morally make me want to vomit. She doesn’t offend me so badly that I don’t want to see her again. And that’s how now I apply those principles in my coaching practice and to my family, my clients and friends. And I have a sister that I very seldom talk to. I love her to pieces, but she’s just on the negative train and I’m not climbing on board. I’m at the station and she’s jugging on by. Right.

00:18:23 – Speaker A
Wish her well.

00:18:24 – Speaker B
She’s the thing I leave at the buffet. Yeah, this is great conversation. I love this. So in my life, it has been a common part of me misnomer that somebody healthy and very athletic is never susceptible to disease. I’ve heard that most of my life. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being healthy, but guess what? People, people that are incredibly healthy, like Fitz, are susceptible to disease. And in 2019, you were diagnosed with breast cancer. And I’ve had that really close in my life. My grandma had breast cancer. One of my cousins had breast cancer. I know many, many people that are breast cancer survivors, thank goodness. I also know ones, unfortunately, that have suffered and passed from cancer. So you’re diagnosed and proceeded to be brutalized by 15 months of chemo, radiation and surgery. I’ve never experienced somebody when I was reading and researching you that has attacked life head on like you have from diagnosis to where you are today. You didn’t shut down and you went overdrive into your career. That’s amazing. You’re somebody that is a great role model to a society that tells people you have cancer. You don’t know how long you’re going to live. You got to get into that little cocoon and you’re going to live on the hamster wheel mentally and you’re going to suffer. You maybe not going to eat properly. Maybe you’re going to stop doing all the things that made you happy. Well, there’s no defined day when you’re going to pass from cancer. I know people that have gone through everything in ten years, 20 years, they’re still alive and they’re miserable. They never did climb out of it. You are a prime example and a shining light for people that there is better. You can do more. So when this happened to you, was hitting it straight on your first thought or what did you go through initially? Did you have those moments of despair? Did you struggle or did you just, this is who I am, I’m a tenacious person, this is not going to hold me back.

00:20:38 – Speaker A
So there’s a lot to unpack there. It was a very long question.

00:20:43 – Speaker B
Sorry.

00:20:44 – Speaker A
Okay, so I never had a why me moment. I live in Gainesville, Florida. We have the University of Florida, a UF health system here with a pediatric oncology unit. And there’s too many babies with cancer. So the fact that they’ve done nothing wrong in their entire little life and they have cancer just made sense that perhaps I would get it, too. And so health and fitness is not unvaluable because sometimes people still get sick anyways. Exercise, nutrition will steer many people away from things like diabetes and heart disease and many cancers that are lifestyle related. We don’t really have an answer to why I have breast cancer, had breast cancer, but we do know that in Asia, one in 40 women are diagnosed. In America, it’s one in eight women. So there’s something we’re doing. I just haven’t figured it out yet. However, my health and fitness definitely came into play as a way to keep me out of infection, keep me out of the hospital, keep me away from all sorts of horrible things that could have happened if I were not healthy and fit. And my doctor leaned in and said, you would not have been able to do the things that you have been doing if you had not taken such care of yourself before cancer and during cancer. So the health and fitness was a very powerful tool, and I encourage anybody to prepare their body to do battle today, because you never know when illness or injury will strike, and you will be far more likely to recover and rebound if you have a strong, fit body going into crisis. So I’ll start there. When I was first diagnosed, I definitely thought I was dying. I had no evidence to back that up. I had a clean mammogram in December 2018. Less than seven weeks later, I found a lump. And within a few days, I was in there getting scans and biopsies, and it had already spread to my lymph nodes. And so when I got the call about having cancer, it went something like this. Hey, Fitz, I’m so sorry. Your mass and your lymph nodes have tested positive for cancer. It’s very aggressive. It’s running through you like wildfire. We need to treat you immediately. So that was a call. It wasn’t like, yeah, you got it, but we got time. So I just thought, well, damn it, I have the perfect family, perfect career, perfect beacon of health and happiness. I’m definitely going to make the perfect tale of tragedy. Now for the most positive girl in the world to think that is pretty drastic, but cancer will do that to you. So it was maybe a couple of weeks that I thought, it’s going to be awful. And really the thing that I couldn’t stand losing was my children’s future. I just want to be with them. So that was heart wrenching. It was so painful. And finally I met with my oncologist, Dr. Gordon, who he said, fitz, you are not dying of this thing. He said, 94% of all breast cancer cases are curable. Yours is specifically curable. He says it’s aggressive, so we’re going to treat it aggressively, but we plan to cure you. So then I thought, okay, that’s better. So I checked with the radiology oncologist. I was like, do you think you can cure me? She said, we are curing you. And I talked to the surgeon. Everyone was on board that I was going to be cured. So I decided to start thinking that way. And I knew I was in for a road of miserable chemo, and I was 15 months of it, which was God awful. But I decided right away that cancer might steal my hair, and it did. And it might steal some good feelings, and it did. But it was not going to steal time with my career, time with my kids. So if Ginger or Parker had a sport, a ceremony, a show, something special, I was going to be there. Even if I had to leave the hospital to go do it. I was not missing out on their stuff, and then I was not missing out on my career. I have a dream career for me. I had earned my rightful spot on all of those stages. Whether it be race announcing or keynotes, those are coveted stages that I stand on. And I’ve earned my spot there, and I love it. And let’s not forget the fact that I need to have an income, right? I mean, some people are like, oh, you’re just stay home. Oh, really? Who’s going to pay these bills? So I decided that I was going to go. And so what happened was I start chemo. I didn’t know what was really going to happen. You go into it hoping for the best. Well, pretty much the worst happened. I became like the sickest person on earth, violently ill, exploding all the time. I had IV fluids every single day for six months. IV fluids. It was that bad. But I was determined. So I got on those planes and I figured out how to travel while violently ill. And I’d get to my destination. And my race directors quite frequently had organized a medical person to bring me IV fluids in my hotel or on site. So we were taking those steps to keep me upright, to keep me going. And the real miracle of it all started happening. My first race post chemo is you get so sick sometimes you sleep on that hotel bathroom floor. You know the floor for some reason. That’s a good place to be when the room is spinning. Yes, but alarm goes off at 430 in the morning, and I get up and drag myself over to the start line. And the second I stand on the start line with my 10,000 athletes that day, absolutely everything that was wrong with me disappeared. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t suffering, I wasn’t stressed. I was just filled with joy. And so I learned on that day that I was doing the right thing. So all those people that were like, no, stay home, hide out, they were wrong, and I was right. Being surrounded by these wonderful people at these extraordinary events was the best medicine. And so I thrived as long as I was on a microphone. And then the flight home was kind of rough. And I’d get home and I’d sleep it off. I’d do my best, and I’d get more chemo, and I get more sick, and I’d figure out how to get back. I would show up to TSA usually once a week, because I took 30 trips out of Gainesville, Florida, to either speak or announce races during my treatment. And my husband would always drop me off at the airport, and he’d walk me up to TSA, and he knew what was going on. I wasn’t telling anyone else in the world what was going on. And I’d get up there, and he would be staring at my bald head and my glossy eyes, and he would say, how are you going to do it? I would say, I just am. And I was right. And the one thing people should believe in is themselves. The getting stuck in the chest with needles, that was really stressful for me. That was really hard. The sickness was really hard. But powering through to get to the thing that I wanted wasn’t hard. It was the only choice for me. In fact, had I stayed home, I would have been miserable. I’m not sure I would have survived. If I had given up on my career for that year and a half, I’m not sure I would have survived. All I would have been was sick, and it would have been just too devastating. Yeah, I made great choices, and was my life tricky? For sure. Was there some hard stuff? For sure. But there’s going to be hard stuff anyways. It was cancer. So I’m really proud of the decisions I made, and they’re the reason I’m here, I think.

00:28:00 – Speaker B
Did you have anybody in your corner besides your husband, obviously, and some other family? Possibly? Did you have some inspiration that you could focus on that drove you, or was it just because of the way you were wired before the cancer?

00:28:17 – Speaker A
Yeah, so it was my wiring. I even now don’t have any role models. I mean, I have people that I think are awesome and impressive, but I don’t have anyone with, say, the career that I want or that’s the mom I want to be or whatever. And also what’s nice is I don’t have any envy. I have zero envy over anyone anywhere. I just don’t feel envy. I feel happy for people’s success.

00:28:42 – Speaker B
What a great way to be, though.

00:28:44 – Speaker A
It’s a gift. Yeah, it’s a gift.

00:28:46 – Speaker B
It is a gift. It is. It really is.

00:28:49 – Speaker A
Yeah. So I think what happened. And again, some people are like, what’s your superpower? I can tell you I have zero superpowers. I’m as regular as they come. But what I learned early on so right before I started chemo, which was my first form of treatment, I had to go in for this last minute MRI. The doctor says, we squeezed you in. It was like a Friday afternoon MRI, and chemo was supposed to start Monday morning. And so if anyone’s familiar with the MRI, quite often they lie you down on this little tray, like a little skinny bed, and you lie on your back, and they shove you into this little teeny tube, and then Thor bangs the hammer. Boom, boom, boom on the side. And so if you’re claustrophobic like me, that’s a really bad experience. If you’re not claustrophobic, you’re just literally lying there for 45 minutes and then maybe fall asleep, and then you get out. So regular MRI freaks me out. For breast cancer MRI, it’s a little different. They didn’t tell me this. First of all, they stick me with a needle, which I don’t anticipate, and I’m a needle phobe. So get there, stick me with the needle, which makes me cry because I’m already stressed. And then we go into the MRI room, and she says, okay, now climb up and lie face down with your arms up like Superman. And I was like, what? No, I’m supposed to lie on my back? She says, no, I down. And so I just do as I’m told, and I climb up, and I lie down. And then she proceeds to take these clamps, these plates, and pinches me in by my boobs. She literally clamps me to the table, pins me down by the chest. So I’m there like this, and my face is in. It’s almost like a massage face cradle, but it’s a dollar store version. It’s a real crappy little thing. So I’m down on the table. She didn’t give me a moment to put my hair back. I have long hair. She didn’t give me a chance to crack my back or anything. She just said, get up and lie down. And then she goes, don’t move, or you will ruin everything. So now they’re like and I can feel everything about me needs to move, and I’m starting to get stressed. And then she takes a little table, and she shoves me into the machine. And with that, I lose it. I mean, I am so type A. I’m very good at restraining myself. I was screaming and flailing, hyperventilating, just a full blown freak out, get me out here. And so she pulls me out. Now, instead of being nice, she’s really crappy. She’s like, you, you got to stay still, or I stayed late for you, and if you don’t do this, you can’t start chemo. And remember, she’s yelling at me like, I’m sorry. You need to crack my back and pull my hair back. I just need a minute. Just give me a minute. So she does. Gives me a minute. She gets me out. I pull my hair back. I take the socks off trying to get loose, and anyhow, I get back on the table, and she pinches me back in. And, guys, perhaps you might think about being pinned in by your junk. That’s like, not cool, right? So then she back in there, and now I know I have to grit it out. It’s 45 minutes for me of torture. Now, if you walked into the room and you saw me there, you would just say, oh, Fitz is relaxing on her face. But the mental turmoil, what I wanted to do was kick and scream and flail and run, but I had to restrain myself. And so what happened is the little girl inside my head, the woman, the strong chick in there, she sprung into action. And so she started telling me, fitz, you can do hard things. You have built a global business. You have raised two great children. You used to be a competitive kickboxer. You’ve got this. You can do hard things. You just hang in there. You’ve got this. And so for 45 minutes, lying there wanting to freak out, she talked me off of that cliff over and over and over, and she must have said it every 3 seconds. I mean, it never stopped. But eventually, I had said it enough that 45 minutes were up, and she pulled me out and set me free. And so I learned that day that if I wanted to survive, and I very much did, that I was going to constantly have to do things that terrified me. And every single time I sat down for a needle poke I mean, again, poking you in the chest in that port, super bad experience, I would sit down and say, you got this. You can do this. You’re tough stuff. I sound like a lunatic in there, but that person inside my head was my greatest asset through my treatment. So, yes, I had family. Yes, I had friends. But no matter how much they did support me and wanted to support me, absolutely zero of them could sit down in a chair and take a needle for me. None of them could take a radiation zap. None of them could go through surgery or take my bald head for a day. So I had to be my greatest advocate. And what I find are too many people spend too much time putting themselves down. You’re fat. You’re not good enough. You’re not pretty. You’re not whatever it is, you have to shut that person up. You need to reprogram that person in your head to help you, to encourage you, to support you, or else you’re doomed. Because even if all the people on the outside are telling you you’re so great and stuff, I mean, look at Marilyn Monroe. What the hell was going on there? Everybody loved her, thought she was fabulous and beautiful, and she downs a bottle of pills so you have to stick up for yourself. And I started doing that and it was a wonderful weapon against cancer, and it is a very powerful weapon in the real life, too, because nothing scares me anymore. I mean, if something happened to my children, that would scare me. Other than that, there’s nothing something in business could throw at me that would scare me. I don’t get nervous about stages. I don’t get nervous about negotiations. I don’t get nervous about Jack. All I feel is happy to be alive and excited to do what I want to do. And yeah, it’s been a great gift. I wouldn’t redo it. If I could go back and not have cancer, I’d go back and not have cancer. But I can’t. And if I didn’t learn those lessons, then shame on me.

00:34:49 – Speaker B
Well, yeah. So many people don’t realize our brain is a giant computer. It doesn’t know the difference between a truth and a lie and what we tell. It feeds us and it controls every habit of our life. It controls our sleep, it controls our nutrition, it controls our associations. And we have to love ourselves. We have to be telling ourselves and being our own best friend, people are going, well, that’s kind of weird. Well, no positive self talk and having gratefulness for where I’m at in my life and understanding the trials and tribulations I’ve gone to and putting them in the right place and not being a victim to it, and understanding that things happen to me, not for me. And I got to analyze it, I got to look at it and what did this do for my life?

00:35:39 – Speaker A
Isn’t it weird that people do trash.

00:35:41 – Speaker B
Themselves all the time, my clients all the time?

00:35:47 – Speaker A
I don’t want to be that person. I used to be that person. I had an eating disorder and I was an overweight teenager. Not terribly overweight, but overweight enough that I felt bad about myself. And screw that. I will never punish myself again. I’m just not going to do it. I will work harder to be a better person. I will work harder to be fitter, to be smarter, to know more, to do better, but I’m never going to beat myself up. That’s not the way to get anywhere fast.

00:36:11 – Speaker B
No. And it’s not a great example to set, as you mentioned, your kids all the time. My three core values are faith, family and work. My family, my grandkids, they meet the world to me and I need to show up and set the proper example for them because that pattern teaching that we teach, even the negative patterns, I’m not perfect that I went through as a single dad, raising him, having full time custody. I made mistakes and I owned up to them. Now, as adults, I’ll say to them, we’ll talk about things that went on or things that I did in my career or did with just anything, even dealing with them. And we have those open conversations, and I admit people, you need to admit when you made a mistake and that your thought process is different. Quit projecting the same thought process. If now you believe something different, if you’re worried about what people think because you’ve changed your mind, you’re in the wrong tribe, you’re in the wrong associations.

00:37:08 – Speaker A
So I have people that will come to me for advice on health and fitness, right? And so we talk about their eating habits, and they say, yeah, but I’ve already been giving my kids lots of soda and I’ve been giving them candy and stuff. It’s like, okay, well, now it’s the time to just show up and say, you know what, kids? When you know better, you do better. And now I know better. Now I know that the foods that I’ve been feeding you haven’t been benefiting you. They’ve been bad for our bodies, bad for our minds. So we’re going to start making changes. I’m learning, and we’re going to make progress based on the things that I’ve learned. I’m not going to make you cold turkey on anything today, but we are going to move in a better direction. And I’m sorry I screwed up in the past. We’ll do better, right?

00:37:49 – Speaker B
I did that, too. And I used to do like I had daughters that had health issues, and I started researching, and there wasn’t a lot of good information, not a lot of good help in the medical community. I started reading stuff and doing elimination diets, eliminating different things and getting sugar out of the house and no pop. And the only time they had is if they were at their grandparents or at a family event, they could have, okay, go ahead, Dak. We have a pop.

00:38:14 – Speaker A
Sure.

00:38:14 – Speaker B
When they come home. That wasn’t a reality. Their nutrition was laid out, and we discussed it, and certain kids had to do things a certain way because of health and elimination effort I put in to figure their health out helped me. I became better at understanding nutrition. You got to let them eat that. What are you doing? Why don’t you buy candy? Why don’t you have candy in your pantry? Like, why don’t you do? Because I love my kids a different way than you love your kids. You love your family the way you love them. My sisters were the worst. I love them, but they were the worst. They’d have a candy cupboard. Both of them crazy. Oh, yeah. Their kids had access to it. My kids would be like, dude, well, I’m not them. I’m sorry. I’m me.

00:39:04 – Speaker A
We didn’t allow our kids they could have a piece of birthday cake, but they couldn’t have donuts. Like, donuts are birthday cake dumped in oil. I had just had these standards.

00:39:14 – Speaker B
We’re not having that deep fried birthday cake. It’s so horrible on your body and what it does to your brain center. Oh, my gosh. We can go on and on about nutrition.

00:39:25 – Speaker A
There was a variety of things that they couldn’t have that my friends were just giving their kids, and I never felt bad because you know what we had? Instead of a dining room table, we had a bounce house in our house. We had a bounce house in the dining room. And so when people say, well, your kids don’t get candy, sugar candy, I’m like, no, but they have a bounce house in the dining room. So we just focus on different things. If you think fun is eating donuts or sugary stuff, okay. Our version of fun is bouncing up and down and screaming loud and playing loud music and being rowdy in the dining room. That’s our version of fun. So you eat your way into hilarity. We’re going to make memories having fun in a different way, and I really think our way is superior.

00:40:08 – Speaker B
And the key thing you said there is memories.

00:40:11 – Speaker A
Well, yeah, food doesn’t memories. When people say, I’m going on a cruise and I’m going to get my money’s worth. No, you’re not. Not if you focus on the buffet, because you will never look back and feel so strongly about the rice you consume that night at dinner. Ziplining and dancing and play do the karaoke. You’re going to have a great time. You’re going to get your money’s worth in memories.

00:40:37 – Speaker B
Well, you come back with a vacation hangover. I hear that all the time, but they’re lethargic and I get it. When you go on holidays, like, I’m leaving in a week. I’m going to Europe for three weeks, and I got to do a conference, and then the rest of it is going to be traveling with a friend of mine, and we talked about it last night. He lives in Hawai. We talked about the fact of certain things that I don’t eat and I don’t do. But there’s going to be certain times along the trip where I’m going to try that dessert in Italy or I’m in Spain, but I’m not going to be gorging myself. I’m not going to be totally falling off the railroad tracks. And I told him that, you’re only going to live once. I said, yeah, you’re right. I’m only going to live once. And I don’t want to feel like we’re doing all these tours and traveling and all this walking. We’re doing all these hikes. I’m not going to have those food hangovers because I know what it feels like, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try the OD thing. But I can still live my nutritional lifestyle, even in another country, Greece. I’ve done it in the Middle East. I’ve done it in my travels in the US. It’s possible, and life’s a decision.

00:41:52 – Speaker A
It’s amazing to me how many people say, well, I can’t lose weight or I can’t, whatever, because I travel for work and I say, okay, well, so do I. I travel 40 weekends a year. And what I have found is that there are fruits and vegetable and water and lean protein sources in every city, state, country I’ve been to. All of them have fresh produce, all of them have water, all of them have lean meats, all of them have free sidewalks to walk on. There’s no excuse. There’s no valid excuse. You might make an excuse and shame on you. Right. You decide to be a lesser version of yourself. Our family motto is perfect is boring. So there’s no expectation of perfection. Perfection is unattainable. So why try? But if 85 90% of your decisions are really good ones you’re going to reap the benefits. That’s right.

00:42:45 – Speaker B
Absolutely. Love this conversation. People listening or watching. I don’t care what age you are. I don’t care where you’re at in your life. It starts with deciding I’m willing to change and take that little baby step like they say that saying how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time. When you’re changing your life. I find too many people when I’m coaching them, they fail because they take on too much and they have the committee a day. The people that are you should do it this way, you should do it that way. Always beacon in their ears and going WA like the old Charlie Brown. And they need to understand. They need to change all things in their life need to start and they need to change associations and learn how to goal set and do baby steps. Because all of a sudden, if you’re going to change the fact that you don’t watch this type of TV show or you don’t listen to this type of person, plus you’re changing your nutrition, this and this and that, not everybody’s wired to take that all on at once. Right. So it’s okay to start with baby steps honestly and find yourself a mentor if you don’t have the ability to figure it out on your own.

00:43:54 – Speaker A
Yeah, two things on those line it’s on occasion someone will say well I’ll give out fitness advice and I am highly credentialed. I have a master’s in exercise and sports sciences and I’ve been doing it for many years. On occasion someone say, well my uncle said okay well tell me about your uncle’s credentials. Let’s start there. He doesn’t have any credentials but he actually okay, well so we just start there. He doesn’t have any credentials and now I have to listen to his advice. After spending decades learning about this field becoming an actual expert I have to listen to your oh well no, you’re right. Are you really going to take your uncle’s advice over this where I can show you evidential I could show you proof? No. So there’s that and then also when I was diagnosed when I was diagnosed so I would have preferred to keep it all private. I believe your private life should be private. And I don’t really buy off on people sharing every gory detail on social media. It’s not my bag. However, I was going to show up on stage as bald, and people are going to start asking questions. I was not a wig wearer, so I thought, okay, I’m going to have to say, tell people what’s going on. And I did it in a very short, weird video where I just said, hey, guys, good news, bad news or bad news? Good news. I’ve got breast cancer. Good news is I’m curable. I’m going to be fine. I will accept no pity. You can root for me, but I’m going to show up and I’m going to perform as expected. I’ll see you soon. So that was that. But that send off this onslaught of hundreds and hundreds of a well wishes. And people were so kind, and they did root for me, which I really appreciated. But then there were so many people saying, well, my aunt’s cousin had breast cancer, and you could talk to that person. My brother’s mom had this whatever. All these different variations, if everyone wanted to give me advice. And I took none of it. I took none of it. I had chosen that. The people that were guiding me were my doctors, and I have plenty of resources, nurses, people I could contact. And then I had two very close friends. One was going through breast cancer care at the same time. One had just previously gone through it. And I decided if I needed some advice from someone who’d been through it, I would go to these two good friends of mine and then the whole world that wanted to give out all sorts of random advice, I didn’t take.

00:46:13 – Speaker B
With no credentials.

00:46:14 – Speaker A
With no credentials, right.

00:46:17 – Speaker B
Trust me, I go through that all the time. People are giving me finance advice. And they’re broke, right? Mentally broke, too.

00:46:26 – Speaker A
Well, with fitness and money, it’s very similar. I teach people about a caloric budget. It’s the same as don’t spend more than you make. And if you’re investing for the future, unless you’re a lucky wealthy person, we don’t start out with $1 million in our IRA, right? You put in $50 a week, and eventually it becomes a million dollars. So it’s consistency and discipline and constantly leaning into doing the right thing. And you may not be perfect.

00:46:58 – Speaker B
Maybe discipline is a foreign word to most of our population.

00:47:02 – Speaker A
You do so good in America.

00:47:06 – Speaker B
Yeah. It’s unbelievable, though. Like, you talk about, don’t spend more. When I sit and I talk to people and I say, you know what? No matter what age, I even got my son doing it. Not all my kids listen to me. I’m dad. What do I know? Your credentials don’t mean squat. 21 years, thousands of people help. What do you know? Save first spend later.

00:47:29 – Speaker A
You know what?

00:47:29 – Speaker B
While you make a dollar, save twenty cents and learn how to live off of 80 and you do it with something called a budget. I’m not living on a budget. Why? You don’t like living a structured life where you know you can actually pay for things? You’re going to live on the credit card, hamster wheel, lines of credit loans like everybody else. Do you want to be average or do you want to be abnormal? I choose abnormal. I don’t want to be the normal.

00:47:52 – Speaker A
Keeping up with the Joneses. Do you want to hear exciting twice? Sure. Two years ago, I paid off my houses. My house, not my house, is my house. I have zero debt on my house. All three cars of my paid off. I owe $0 to anybody for any all of my bills are voluntary, so if I want to have a cell phone, I pay a cell phone bill. If I don’t want that bill anymore, I can cut it off. But I have a place to sleep, I have transportation. I have zero debt and zero on the credit card.

00:48:25 – Speaker B
Perfect. Yeah, it is discipline. Discipline is so foreign to people. It’s not just with finance, it’s with fitness. It’s with everything. It’s even what they feed themselves mentally every single day like you choose to if you’re depressed listeners, people watching one of the biggest things, associations. People get depressed and they put on sappy music, they put on a drama show that they like, or movies. All they do is feed it. They feed it. How about you do things that are completely opposite? Oh, it’s uncomfortable. Guess what life isn’t? This isn’t life’s in session. This ain’t a dress rehearsal. You need to put effort into you. In order for you to serve your family, serve others, you need to serve yourself. And quit following the Committee of they quit following all the naysayers and everybody that’s non credentialed in anything, and they think they know it. All right, I get to a point. 21 years into my latest entrepreneurship, I tell people, you know what? You listen to your broke brother in law, your family, your dad, your mom. You listen to your other people. I say the same thing as you. What’s their credentials? When did they get their credentials in finance? How many years? Well, they don’t have anything. Oh, so you’re choosing to listen to somebody. Are they where you want to be in life? And what do most people say to me?

00:49:52 – Speaker A
No.

00:49:53 – Speaker B
Do they have debt? Oh, yeah. They’re a massive debt. So why are you listening to their advice? Why don’t you listen to somebody that’s gone through it all? Help serve other people. Utilize that same process to make my life again. My mantra is helping people live life on purpose, not by accident. That’s why you’ve come to me. Why would you listen to your father or your brother?

00:50:15 – Speaker A
Yeah. And here’s the deal. And if it’s not us, fine. Go find some other highly credentialed, reputable, professional. Fine. If somebody has gone through my education, I promise you they’re not promoting pills and powders and diets and this gimmicky crap. They’re not doing it. If somebody has been through your education, they’re probably not promoting a get rich quick scam.

00:50:41 – Speaker B
They’re not promoting MLMs. They’re not promoting hey, for 995, you can buy this course and you’ll be making 10,000 a month in 90 days.

00:50:56 – Speaker A
Don’t spend more than you make. Save more, spend less. It’s not complicated.

00:51:00 – Speaker B
Absolutely. So we’re going to a couple more things and then we’re going to have to wrap up here. But this is one of the things I really find it passionate when people want to work and inspire children. So you created a very successful school running walking program called the Morning Mile, which has inspired millions of children, their families and teachers to get moving in the morning. Tell the listeners, what was that journey like creating that program? And was it welcomed immediately in the school or was it a grind to get it in place?

00:51:33 – Speaker A
So when my children were little, there was another school that had just a loosely run before school walking running thing. Like kids could show up and walk and run, and I kept thinking, wow, I wish my kids could do that. And this mommy friend of mine would constantly brag about her son running in kindergarten. I was like, Gosh, I wish my kids could do that. And then finally the light bulb went off and I thought, I wish all kids could do that. And I can make it even more fun by adding music, by adding rewards. How do we incentivize them? I don’t think that’s an age where I mean, they could sign up for sports, but at school, it’s not coaching, it’s not forcing it’s just let’s welcome them onto the field. So the Morning Mile is the only before school walking running program that invites every child every day, plus their family, plus the faculty. There’s no cost to participate. Kids can come and run or walk for 30 minutes. They can show up, do one lap and go to class. There’s no coaching, no choreography. It is simply free space and time to move forward. You can run really fast, you can walk really slow. I don’t care. Just get moving. And so Morning Mile is in over 400 schools worldwide, including and Japan, and I believe it’s Bermuda. I’m very proud of this program, and my strong belief is that if we can teach kids healthy habits easily, adoptable healthy habits that can do early on, they will never hit their thirty s and need Weight Watchers or diets or pills or any of those things. They will be kids that understand the value of wake up, move our body, and then we go to school or then we go to work. And so I’m so proud of this program. Millions of miles have been walked and run. They’re conquered. And it’s not only kids getting fit but their their parents. I get so many messages from parents who say, oh, my kids have add. They’re not getting referrals anymore. They’re behaving they’re learning. Our whole family has lost weight. Our whole family. Now we’ve updated our eating habits. There’s no preaching about nutrition in the morning mile. It’s just an opportunity to come walk a run. But because of this one good habit, it has led to so many more good habits. So if anybody else feels strongly about this and would like to get more kids moving in the mornings, whether it’s your child’s school or you own a business and you’d like to sponsor the program, it’s morningmile.com. And my goal for starters is to have it in every school in America and then all the other schools too. I already have some Canadian kids moving in the morning, so let’s do more, right?

00:54:03 – Speaker B
Yeah. It’s unfortunate though, that government wouldn’t take this to task to implement programs like that. I know. I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger doing his fitness stuff for people in California. It’s not rocket science. You want to keep your health care costs down, keep people healthy.

00:54:21 – Speaker A
You are right about that. But this is where we differ. I do not think the government should be the be all, end all of everything. And I think that this is a perfect place for the private sector to be heroic. And so our program are funded by hospitals or attorneys or plumbers who find value. I give them marketing opportunity. They put a banner on the field says morning mile brought to you by John’s plumbing. And yeah, I mean the government they’re.

00:54:49 – Speaker B
Responsible for no, I’m not saying that they should pay for it. I’m saying that they should make it as part of the curriculum. They don’t do enough because in Canada, the government lays down what the curriculum is going to be. The education minister and this is what it’s going to be. And they have gym once every few days or once a day. But I think if they encourage this kind of message, still have the input from private sector, I think that’s great. That’s what I meant. I meant the government needs to restructure the school system to have things like this and say this is part of their curriculum. It’s being dealt by private sector. All we’re doing is saying this has to be part of the day.

00:55:34 – Speaker A
You know what if my leadership or your leadership just said, hey guys, prioritize fitness. There’s this great program called the morning mile, you all get on it. I’d agree with that. I just don’t think taxpayers need to be burdened with more.

00:55:47 – Speaker B
Yeah, I agree 100%.

00:55:49 – Speaker A
And if nike or lululemon told people to do it, man, the power of the private sector is undeniable. If nike came out and said every school in Canada should. Have the morning mile. Pretty soon, every school in Canada would have the morning mile. So there’s this tremendous power from the private sector, which is why I’m so proud to be a part of it. Everything I do is people are choosing right. And freedom.

00:56:17 – Speaker B
Freedom the joy in your face. Like people listening. You don’t see that people watching. You see what I see. Fitz is joy talking about this program. It’s very contagious. It’s amazing what you’ve accomplished throughout your life. And thank you so much for sharing and being vulnerable about so many things. I hope things like the morning mile listeners do it. Fitz talked about, I’m going to reach out and talk to my one daughter, two different schools in the community just outside of emmonton and say to her, we need to figure this out. I know you talked about lululemon as one last thing. Lululemon used to be a Canadian company that sold to the US. It was created by a billionaire. He’s now a billionaire. He never used to be in Vancouver, Canada, right. On the British coast.

00:57:14 – Speaker A
I have given them half a billion dollars. I’m pretty sure once my wardrobe is far too lulu.

00:57:22 – Speaker B
I wear a ton of lulu myself. But bottom line, they have online fitness that you can go on. They have yoga. They do it so much for adults. But I wonder if they’ve ever thought about focusing on younger generations. I don’t know if their programs extend out to that, because you go into the lululemon to giant stores they have here, literally, they advertise everywhere. Like, come on here, do yoga with us and do that, and it’s all free. People don’t realize that, right. But the company itself, it’s gotten a little bit too big for me. When it originally was Canadian owned, it was a lot more focused and centralized to a message. I can see now that they have so much more branding and products that they never used to have. And again, I’m not cutting Lulu down.

00:58:12 – Speaker A
Because if you look at my clothes.

00:58:14 – Speaker B
I have a ton of lululemon stuff. So do my kids. My daughter worked for them, so it was kind of hard not to when she was a teenager in high school. Hey, dad, we have the family event coming up. Do you want some lululemon? Originally I was like, nah, now I have sweaters. That’s how much I don’t. I have casual pants. I wear theirs. Yeah. Today I’m not wearing it because it was a little bit cold, so I put on something warmer. I wanted to keep my body temperature up. Most of my lululemons, it wicks away your heat, right. So it’s not great when it’s cold out for me anyway. But I appreciate you bringing that up. So, Fitz, if you had to give our listeners one last closing message, what would you tell them in regards to giving a heck and never giving up?

00:59:00 – Speaker A
Start with yourself. Take great care of yourself. You deserve good things and you can do hard things. And life’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be challenging. And when you put your mind to doing the great things and cook yourself up and believe that you can do those hard things, everything’s better for you. And then everything’s also better for the people surrounding you. So if you’re unhealthy, if you’re not at your best, you can’t be any good for anybody else. So start with you.

00:59:24 – Speaker B
Give a heck about you 100%. Self care is so important. I will add though, I have a degenerative spine disease. I have two different diseases in my spine. One of them is scoliosis. And in my fifty s, I can’t do the same things that I used to do as my spine degenerates. But I don’t use it as an excuse not to climb in life. Too many of us stay camped in life. We find excuses, we have people feed us excuses. Self care is important. Start programming your little voice in your head, the little voice management system. You can develop that and you can achieve anything, absolutely anything at any age. Reach out to Fitz or myself. You know what? If all you need is an encouragement, I’m here for you, right? I have no problems directing you to start off getting out of the hamster will of life and living a purposeful life. And Fitz’s story, like everything you’ve shared today, is remarkable. What a great role model you are to people, right? The world deserves more people like you. So thank you for investing some of your time in my listeners and myself. I really appreciate you.

01:00:41 – Speaker A
Well, thank you, Dwight. And I hope to hear from folks say hello on social media or on Fitzness.com. I’d love to have perfect.

01:00:48 – Speaker B
I was just going to ask you that. So the best way to reach you is fitness.com.

01:00:53 – Speaker A
So it’s fitness there’s that z in the middle. And then I’m at Fitzness on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube.

01:01:05 – Speaker B
I think I linked to all of them when I went through your application yesterday. But yeah, I’ll make sure that’s for the new listeners go to Give A Heck, hit the podcast portal button and you will see the picture of Fitz and you can see their previous show notes. I’ll make sure there’s links in there so you can easily access her. Any last comments that you’d like to make?

01:01:27 – Speaker A
No. Thanks for having me, Dwight. It was nice meeting you all. Say hello again. Hope to see you all soon.

01:01:33 – Speaker B
Yes, so thanks so much for being on Give A Heck. I appreciate your time and sharing some of your experiences is so that others too can learn. It is never too late to give a heck.