3441: 22 Fitness Milestones to Mark Your Journey From Chump to Champ by Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness on Personal Fitness

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Health Daily, 22 Fitness Milestones to Mark Your Journey From Chump to Champ by Steve Kamb of NerdFitness.com and I'm Dr. Neal. Hey there, happy Tuesday and welcome back to Optimal Health Daily where I simply read to you from the best health and fitness blogs for free. I cover fitness, nutrition, stress management, weight management, and lots more. Just like an audio book, but from a bunch of different authors.

[00:00:58] And always with permission from the sites and always with a bit of my commentary at the end. Now on Fridays I do something a little different. I answer your questions right here on the show. You can send me a question by going to oldpodcast.com slash ask or you can email your question directly to health at oldpodcast.com. Thank you so much in advance for taking the time and trusting me and sending me your questions.

[00:01:26] And with that, let's keep this intro nice and short and jump into today's article and continue optimizing your life. 22 Fitness Milestones to Mark Your Journey From Chump to Champ by Steve Kamb of NerdFitness.com Level 1.1. Start. Here we go. Milestone 1. You lose your first pound.

[00:01:54] You step on the scale after a few days of eating less and you're down a pound, headed in the right direction for the first time in your life. Hopefully you don't celebrate by eating everything off the dollar menu at Wendy's. Milestone 2. You prepare your first healthy meal. After realizing that it actually was pretty good and saved you some money, you decide to bring your lunch in to work at least two times a week instead of fast food. Somewhere the Burger King silently weeps.

[00:02:25] Milestone 3. You walk your first mile. Dusting the cobwebs off your old running shoes, you head out for a walk around your block and make it a whole mile without stopping. Sure, you were huffing and puffing along the way and you got passed by a kid on a tricycle, but it's a start. You take note to start the Couch to 5K program. Milestone 4. You do your first set of five push-ups.

[00:02:52] Using the success and confidence from your first few weeks of weight loss, you've worked your way up to five whole push-ups. And that distant pipe dream of 20 in a row no longer seems impossible. Milestone 5. You tighten your belt a few notches. You put on your favorite pair of jeans and realize that your belt is now two loops farther over from where it started. Take that, pants! First mushroom. Yahoo! Big Mario!

[00:03:22] Milestone 6. You get your first, hey, did you lose weight comment? And dang, it feels good. Thanks, Marsha from accounting. I have lost weight. Thanks for noticing. You reside on cloud nine for the rest of the day, even after getting yelled at for not putting cover sheets on your TPS reports. Milestone 7. You run in your first 5K and survive. Who cares that you lost to an 80-year-old grandmother pushing a stroller with two grandkids in it?

[00:03:52] You signed up for a race, you trained for it, and then you did it. You briefly entertain the thought of sabotaging future grandmothers pushing strollers before deciding to just train harder next time. Milestone 8. You buy new clothes. Your shirts now feel two sizes too big, and your pants keep falling down. You drop your old clothes off at Goodwill and make the trip over to the mall for a whole new wardrobe,

[00:04:19] punching one of the real-life mannequins at Abercrombie and Fitch in the face while you're there. Milestone 9. You finally stop drinking soda for good. It took you two months of weaning yourself off that daily case of Mountain Dew, but you're at the point now where your water actually sounds like a good idea to you. Sure, you'll have the occasional Jack and Coke on the weekends, but other than that, soda is a distant afterthought.

[00:04:46] Milestone 10. You sign up for your company's softball team, ultimate frisbee team, running club, something. You're no longer ashamed of your body and start exercising with other people that you know. You might still end up at the end of the lineup or the back of the pack, but dang it, you're having fun. Hit by your first enemy. Boo! Back to little Mario. Milestone 11. You hit a weight loss plateau.

[00:05:14] Despite a great week of eating healthy and running, you step on the scale and see the same dang number you saw last week. WTF, mate. Milestone 12. A friend of yours has already lost more weight than you in half the time. You start to blame your poor genetics and or assume he took a shortcut, when in reality, you have no idea how hard he's trained or how clean his diet has become. Milestone 13.

[00:05:41] You get hurt and can't exercise for two weeks. You twist an ankle when you play Wii tennis with a little too much intensity, and the doctor says, no exercise until you recover. Dang! All of that hard work and momentum comes to a screeching halt. Oh well, at least you're still eating well, right? Milestone 14. You have a bad week of eating. A destination wedding, vacation with college buddies,

[00:06:10] or a trip with your kids to grandmothers for the week means tons of bad food. Back home, you step on the scale while covering your eyes, afraid of what you'll see. Fire flower time. Back on track, picking up steam. Milestone 15. You mix things up. Up to this point, you've been counting calories instead of paying attention to the quality of your calories and only jogging for your workouts. After the wake-up call from your previous bad week of vacation,

[00:06:38] you step it up a notch. You adopt a healthier diet of mostly lean meats, veggies, fruits, and nuts, and you start putting some serious effort into legitimate weight training and interval training. Milestone 16. You do a pull-up. You struggle, sweat, and squirm your way until your chin is above the bar before dropping like a sack of hammers to the floor. When you recover 20 minutes later,

[00:07:06] you realize that you just lifted your entire body weight off the ground and over the bar. If Chuck Norris was present, he would have started a slow clap for you before roundhouse kicking a criminal in the face. Milestone 17. You buy a new bathing suit and can't wait to show it off. No more t-shirts in the pool for you. You have a weekend beach trip coming up and for the first time in your life, you're excited about it. Tickets to the gun show are free, ladies.

[00:07:36] Milestone 18. You hit a big weight milestone. 100 pounds lost, 30% of your body weight, and so on. Whatever that big number was in your head, you're actually there. Now, instead of focusing on the scale, you're solely focused on getting stronger and faster. A big day. Star power. It's go time. Milestone 19. People start to ask you for advice. Bob from IT wants to know

[00:08:06] if he's doing push-ups properly. Linda from reception asks you questions about eating healthy. And your dad emails you with questions on how to get rid of his beer gut. Milestone 20. You can see your abs. Holy f*** they exist. It's taken months and years of hard work in the gym, a dedicated approach to your diet, and time for the extra skin around your gut to tighten up. But that six pack of abs is finally starting to pop out. The word giddy

[00:08:34] hardly describes your disposition these days. Milestone 21. You get seriously excited about exercising daily. Bench pressing your body weight. Deadlifting twice your weight. Doing 10 pull-ups in a row. Running a 5K in under 20 minutes. And so on. It's weird, but now for some reason, you can't wait to exercise each day. You've been transformed into a completely different person. Optimus Prime would be proud.

[00:09:04] And finally, Milestone 22. You look back at an old picture of you and don't even recognize yourself. You stumble through some old pictures of yourself on Facebook and your jaw drops. Looking at pictures of yourself feels like looking at pictures of a different person. And in many ways, it is. You just listened to the post titled 22 Fitness Milestones

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[00:11:28] to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. What's so great about Steve's post

[00:11:57] is that so many of us go through the majority of the milestones he listed. As I was reading this to you, I was trying not to laugh because I remember when I reached some of the milestones myself. I've shared countless times how for most of my life, I couldn't seem to perform a single pull-up. But after lots and lots of failed attempts, one day, I could finally perform one without assistance. I remember getting hit by what Steve referred to as an enemy like King Koopa in the Mario Brothers games.

[00:12:27] Now these quote-unquote enemies would set me back. For example, I shared how I had the worst case of plantar fasciitis ever. It took weeks for my right foot to finally feel normal again. But I eventually got back on track. And believe me, that wasn't the first time I had a setback. I've strained my back twice. I've had tendinitis in my left elbow. I've had flare-ups of my chronic condition and on and on. But the key is to always

[00:12:57] get back on track and try to, as Steve says, level up where we continue to improve and better ourselves. And hopefully, we reach milestone 22 and beyond. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening every day. I hope you're having a great week so far. And I'll see you back here tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.