Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio. I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. So I end just about every show saying how there are three things we can control, how much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitude. And my next guest exemplifies all three. But when it comes to attitude, given what she has faced and continues to face, she is beyond amazing. And that's what I do here at Fitness Disrupted. I'm gonna educate. We're gonna talk about exercise science and nutrition and the studies, and I'm gonna have on you know, people like Dr Brad Schonfeld and Dr Daniel Lieberman, the best in the business when it comes to their particular subject areas. I'm gonna do what shows myself, I'm an exercise physiologist, and break down some studies on both as well. And yes, you know my area of expertise when I went back for the Masters with sports psychology as well. For this very reason that the mind is so powerful, and when we want true health and overall wellness, we don't take care of the brain and the attitude and our mood and our focus, then it doesn't matter what we put into our body or how much we exercise, They're all connected. And the brain and our belief in ourselves, as I talk about, is everything controlling what we can. Right. So Sally Kolima is going to come up after the break. And she is such an amazing woman that I met several years ago when I was I coached a cancer charity for ten years and one of the greatest things I've done. And you know, when you take fitness and you take cancer and you take charity and you put those three things together, amazing and put so much into perspective when you're around people like Sally who are in credible people, and she will blow you away. She has so many obstacles cancer, not just with her, her husband and her kids, and she's gonna tell you the story. I don't want to give it all away. But this show is about obstacles, this show is about challenges. This show is about inspiration. She's gonna inspire you, she's gonna motivate you. It's about controlling what you can, as I said, And it's about living in the moment, and it's about perseverance and grit, and finally it's about hope, and we need all those things. And when you meet someone and hear someone's story like Sally Kosma, if you don't finish this podcast saying wow, you know I can do it, and you're gonna be in the moment and you're gonna say sure. Life throws obstacles and challenges at everybody, and you can either accept the excuse or go with the challenge. Embrace the excuse or accept the challenge, because you can feel bad about yourself and that's not gonna get you anywhere. And when you hear Sally's story, yea, if if it's not the story of of perseverance and inspiration and just controlling what you can and being happy in the moment. Oh my gosh. So we met years ago. She blew me away. I said, she is exactly the type of person I want on this show. And so I've said enough, We're gonna bring her on. You're gonna hear her story and and prepare to get super super inspired. All right, when we come back from the break, I'm just gonna let her tell her story. Sally Coxma, We'll be right back, and we are back. Could not I say this with the majority of my guest, but this guest, I can't tell you how excited I am to bring her to you and to to speak with her. It's been a little while for me. Sally Kolima, just this is what this show is about. In my opinion, she is one of the most amazing women I have come into contact with. We met through a charity I coached, and she is a huge part of So, Sally, without further ado, thank you so much for taking the time today, thank you for having me on them. So honored, and it's so good to be with you again. It's been a while, and we were kind of talking before we went live and we started recording, and uh yeah, so we met. I think we were saying, what two thousand fourteen at one of your one of the Empire State Building run ups. Yes, we both did the Empire State Building run up for the Multiple my Loma Research Foundation, and I don't know if you remember how we first met, but I wanted to impress you and we had a one armed push up competition. Did we totally forget and you beat me? I'm sure that was so stupid. My arms were so pumped and fatiege and then I needed them to climb the empire after for you beat me. See she left that part out. Uh, Sally is so fed. But we get way ahead of ourselves. So Sally is one of those people that if she doesn't inspire you and get you to just say, you know, listen, life is full of obstacles and we just we we keep moving forward. And that's literally her motto if you go to her website, Sally COXMA dot com. But Sally started at the beginning, So start, you know, with your story, you know right when when things changed, But we'll start with your husband right so, way back when, Okay, way back when, about eleven years ago, I was leaving a fairytale life. I was working part time facilitating events, and I was diagnosed with multiple my looma and incurable blood cancer. And anytime you hear the words you have cancer, your your whole life has turned upside down. But to make matters worse, five months later, my husband was diagnosed with cancer and eight months later he passed away. Unfortunately, his cancer was netting. He had seven different cancers during his lifetime, and two of my three children tested positive for the same genetic disorder. So I have used this, this negativity in my life and turned it around. And I call it adversity training. And I worked through it, and I hope I can inspire others to work through bad times in their life too, and explained most people you know multiple. Unfortunately it's becoming more and more common, right we're hearing more about it thanks to media. I would say and stuff, but explain to people quickly what it is. Multiple. My moment is a blood cancer. When they told me I had it eleven years ago, I never heard of it. I didn't know what it was. And it's a cancer in your plasma cells. It runs through your white blood cells, and it makes you extremely weak, extremely tired, and you have a low immune system. You're susceptible to a lot of infections. But you know it's that cancer progresses. It can eat away your bone and your organs. So it's it's I'm not taking anything away from another cancer, but it's totally different in a way. To treat, you don't go in operate and radiate. You have to get rid of all those stem cells in your body in order to put new ones in and hope they take. And so what have you gone through as far as those type of procedures to to help you. Three years ago I had my stem cell transplant and for six months prior to the transplant, you are bombed with heavy chemotherapies and steroids to eliminate all the cancer in your body. And after they get you to that level, you have to go through what's called harvesting where they draw out all the blood and the cells out of your body. They run it through a machine. They put the blood back in, but they keep the white cells and the plasma. And as long as those cells are healthy, they will regenerate them back into your body through a transplant. However, if those cells are not healthy you, they will go out and look for a donor and that's a needle in a haystack because you need an exact stem cells match to have those cells put into your body. Right, and we should say that we met again. I was the coach of the multiple mileoma We had a team that did you know, various teams did iron Man's did the run up. Kathy Juicety, who was diagnosed just a couple of years probably right before you, how many years, three or four? Yes, she is she's an angel that thank God, what she has done for multiple miloma patients she started the Multiple Miloma Research Foundation, which is one of the top foundations in the world, and they have brought so many drugs through f d A approval. Before Kathy Gusty started this foundation, there was nothing out there. They told her there was nothing they could do for her, and she didn't take that as an answer, and thank god she didn't. Yeah, and then that's you know I've talked about. You know, I'm the fitness advisor for both flecks. I worked with a couple of different you know companies over the years. And when I was asked at a friend who was thinking of starting this team, and she said, you know what it was. And I actually had a friend whose father had just been diagnosed, a good childhood friend. And when I looked into it, as as Sally is saying, it was a no brainers. I said, you know, fitness and charity and cancer and this specific charity and this amazing woman, Kathy Gotta you gotta look her up, by the way, So she was someone who you know, said there's no resources out there, as Sally was saying, and she took it upon herself to create this incredible resource and consortium that has fast tracked what is the number, now, Sally's got to be I believe Yeah, I think it was twelve. Yes, so twelve drugs this year. Two drugs through FDA approval just this year. Oh, that's amazing. And not only this sounds kind of crazy and I don't want to get into it too much, but a lot of the research that goes into cancer drugs I learned, you know, there's not a lot of sharing of the information. And that was one thing that Kathy really took it upon herself to say, this is nuts. We got to open this dialogue and this information and share the research because the twelve drugs were talking about aren't just for multiple miloma. They work for so many different cancers. Yes, that's exactly what they do. It's an unbelievable foundation. That's why I do so much for them. I run so many events, whether it's there five ks, their twelve hour relays, the two hundred mile run in the Park, and of course any time they're involved in the Empire State Building run up, I jump in and do it. I've done it six times now for them. Okay, so let's go to that. Because so many people are are relatively healthy or you know, I call them the Yeah but Sally, Yeah, but I don't have a lot of time. Yeah, but and I say, you know what, we all have all and never more than right now as we record this show, and we're going through this crazy coronavirus time. But so you're diagnosed, and you you have your husband's issue and what you just went through and now your kids. You know, you could very simply have said enough, like I'm done, but no, you turned it around and you said I'm gonna get going and talk about like you know you started. You had to go back to work, and that led to running stairs. That is correct. Um, Like I mentioned to you earlier, I worked part time and I was facilitating events. One of my biggest events was a five k race, so I was very very active. And when he passed away, I had to go support my family and I went back to work full time and I got a great job. I'm thankful for it. But it was sitting all day in the basement and I felt like a caged animal. In fact, I still to this day, I sit on an exercise ball and I have pedals under the desk and I'm standing as we speak. Though. Yes, but I didn't have the time to go running because I had to be with my children after work they had their events, So at lunchtime I would run up the stairs just to relieve stress and get exercise. It was only a five story parking garage, but I did it. And then as the kids, you know, graduated after work, I would put more time into doing the stairs because it was It was a whole new fitness program for me. I'm a lifelong runner and I lift a lot of weights, but this was put in my body into other shape, like the glutes and and the strength in the upper body because you use the rallings and the multiple My Lomer Research Foundation heard about this and they invited me because invite only, as you know, to the Empire State Building run up and I was hooked. Just I loved it, and since then I've done close to a hundred stair climbs in the past eight years. Not only is she's being modest, not only has Sally done a hundred, which is ridiculous that you go, Okay, that's enough, that's crazy, but you're you're like one in the top, and you've gone, you know, from just doing them to being super competitive. Yes, well I'm kind of super competitive in everything. So yeah, but I mean tell the numbers, you got to it, just the rankings throughout the country, in the world. Well, I didn't even realize this till I was out at Sears Willis Tower and I'm talking to the man who's in charge of the entire world Tower Running Association, which believe me, there is one. I can explain that in a minute. And he said, do you know you're one of the top fifty women in the world. And I'm like, I am, And all of a sudden I went on. I looked at my rankings. I knew I was ranked, you know, top ten in United States, but I looked at my ranking and then I said, I gotta work on this. And before my transplant, I was twentieth overall woman in the world, not my age group, not my old lady age. I was like, wow, So right now I'm back to about in the fifties. But you know, I haven't had a chance to travel as much stair climbing, whether it's in the United States or around the world. It's I like to tell people, it's like the NASCAR circuit. The more high race points you do, the more points you can accumulate in the better you do in them, you know, the more points you'll be awarding. So before my transplant, I was all over the place. Since my transplant, the only place I've gone out of the country is France to do the Eiffel Tower. Other than that, I've been in the country doing them. How amazing was that, though it had to be, it was amazing, as I could say. They invited me when I was in the top shape of my life before treatment, and then I found out I had to have treatment, and I asked them if they could defer me another year, and they did. Thank god. I was the only United States female invited. They only invite a hundred and forty people to this race, yes, so it was it was so cool. My my family and friends that were with me during treatment accompanied me over to France and just to run that iconic building and just look down at the top and see where I came from in a year. It meant so much to me because I transplant in February, the race was a year later in March, so I had to work my tail off to do somewhat respectable in that Just amazing. It's and backtrack a little bit because before even the stem cell you had gone through chemotherapy, and you were saying low dose as well, So it's not like you hadn't gone through a bunch of treatments before that as well. No, No, like I said, for six months prior to your transplant, you are given a cocktail of heavy drugs and then you go into the hospital two times where you're admitted for a few days where they're administering even stronger drugs and that's when you lose your hair and you're sick and all that other stuff, so it wipes out your body. When when I was in the hospital for my transplant, I was in for three weeks. I set goals for myself. That way I would work towards something. In fact, I did my first five mile race three months after my transplant because I knew I had to work for something. It wasn't fast by any means, but I set a goal and I worked for it. And I started by just doing laps around the hospital floors, you know, until I could get out of the hospital and then slowly walked more and you know, break into a slow run. And that's what's so amazing, though, Sally is we talked about that all the time here Obviously, I'm big into the sports psychology and the goal setting and and you know you you obviously you're competitive. Like the fact that you went out and did a five k any or five mile anything after that procedure is incredible. And you know that's one thing that at the moment I met you, like, the energy you give off is to But that's it. It's infectious, and it's it's so positive, and you know it's so easy. I end every show Sally saying, there's three things we control, what how much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitude. And you obviously are phenomenal at all three. But the attitude part it could be the most challenging for you. So you know, I'm sure you get this question all the time, But how do you do that? How do you stay so positive when so many things are thrown at you? Train your brain? Your brain, Your mind controls everything. It controls every aspect of your body. You don't think to pick up the pencil when you want. Your body is just trained. Oh I need to write you pick up the pencil. You have to train your entire body, your entire thought process. I only like to use positive words. You don't want to say, am not going to let her win. You don't even want to put that negative word out there. You're gonna say, I am going to win. Um, Although you know you can't control how other people do in a race. But I'm giving you an example that you never use negativity. Everything has to be positive, and I do with everything in my life. If there's a bad situation, I do two things. I try to look for the positive in it, and I also try to look for the humor in it. Sometimes you gotta you know, you don't want to be insensitive looking for humor, but that is definitely a coping skill I have. The other thing I love to live by is a motto that it says it goes something UM. I don't know if I get there's a verbatim. Depression is living in the past. Anxiety is living in the future. Content is living right now, and I try to think of that. If I dwell too much on the fact of my late husband, UM, it could depress you. If I think too much about my cancer diagnosis or my children's diagnosis with the genetic disorder, it could cause anxiety. But right now, everything in my life is good, and if something comes along that isn't good. Well, I'm going to look for the posit and I'm going to make it better. And that's basically what I do with everything in front of me. I love it. And you know, you hit on so many things there, Sally, you talked about, you know, self talk, which I talked about all the time, just did a podcast on it, and I am just like you. And and that's why, you know, I think I bore the listeners to death with my analogies and and you know, examples of racing. But that's what we're talking about, is the self talk. And I often talk the worst I feel in a race, the bigger the smile is on my face, right, because the body doesn't know any differently, right, So I say, like at the end of an iron man, I look like nuts because I had this huge smile and the body's breaking down. That's the thing. If you're running a race and it hurts and you start saying, oh I hurt, my my legs hurt. Your legs are only gonna feel worse. You gotta be like, I feel great, this is amazing, and then your body, your feet off of it. And that's what I do, no matter how horrible. I feel. I don't dwell on the negative. I try to find something positive. In fact, when I was training for a marathon, you know, you go out on those twenty mile runs and something hurts you, I'd be like, Okay, my knees hurt now, but in three miles, my ankle's gonna hurt. Yes, right? Is that true? You know, you go for a little run and there's always gonna be a pain somewhere, and as long as it's not the bad pain, you work through, right, there's always gonna be And everyone, I really encourage you. And I love that Sally, you know, got us here because I just did a whole show on self talk and it's exactly and Sally, I use that I feel great. I mean, how simple is that? And when and you know you have leg pain, instead of thinking, oh my leg hurts, you go my legs feel great. And if your brain tells your body that enough times, it changes the way you feel. It's true. And that's what I do. That's what I do. And believe me, it's not fun and it's not easy climbing up you know, the empire state building, but you have to be positive the entire time up and then you know when you get there, the endorphins, when you get to that top, the endorphins are just going crazy. And you have that that high for weeks along with that climber's cloth. Now I have to most people have done stairs, and they know how challenging they are. I am an endurance guy. I am not a sprinter and anaerobic guy. And the first time I did, I did it I think three or four times. Um, let's put it this way. I have only thrown up once in my life at the end of a race, and it was chasing Natalie Morales up the stairs because we joke about how you know, you and I were going to do it together and then someone will throw the media. As the coach of this charity, I had to carry the go pro and she's really fast and they let her go ahead of me and I tried to catch up, and I eventually caught up, and then she eventually dropped me again. But Sally is underplaying. Not only is it so ridiculously you know high and you're doing so many stairs, but the people don't realize and I didn't either. The air is so dry that and the dusty that gets um knocked up is crazy. Right, It's a totally unique event in a horrible way, horribly great way. There's nothing else like it in the world. There's nothing I have tried, but it's this, Hey, my first empire. I didn't know what to expect either. And it's eighties six floors, but by the ten floor, your heart is like jumping out of your body. You're just can I get this heart rate under control? And the once you feel like you have the heart rate under control, your your thighs are like you're fighting grab in your size, were like, what are you doing? So you pull more with your upper body and then you just start feeling it in the arms and you're you're using everything, including your brain to get up those stairs. And it takes anywhere from right, I think the top people are like holy cat, like nine or ten minutes the top I think I was. I was definitely slower, probably twice that somewhere on eighteen nineteen and somewhere around there. I would rather run for three hours than do that. Eighteen minutes is so brutal. And let me say this too. I don't know if I ever told you this. I don't think we started seeing each other since, but I did it with Amy Freeze, right, you've met her, I'm sure many times I often talk about how I have zero sense of direction and if this doesn't prove it, this is the one thing we got. No way we got of course running up the Empire, straight up the stair do you know where there's that one part where you kind of transition to this it's impossible to run down the hole and they lead you to another staircase. I want h percent blame Amy because I was following her. Uh, we blame each other. But we got lost. We were we were in the wrong hallway and at the backtrack. Yes, so just I'm throwing myself under the belts. We literally got lost. Oh you go. So this is why Sally my stress dream before every iron Man, every marathon, and anyone who's done any race like that or any race and has those stress dreams before, it's about getting lost. It's about getting lost on the course because I'm that bad at it. So what is next for you? By the way, so you're now like you're looking great and feeling great. For me, what is next to her? All my stare climbs are postponed, So that's all on hold. So right now. Why I am stuck at home. The doctors want me to stay absolutely secluded in isolation because being on this chemo therapy therapy suppresses my immune system even more. So i'd be very, very careful during COVID nineteen. I am getting a lot done inside. I'm great with time management. I wake up every day and I have my list of things to do, and I like to cross those things on. So I am getting a lot of write and done. I have a book coming out this year. Life gets in the way, and that's exactly it. You know, you think you're doing something and life takes you on another path. To make the best of it, you use grit to get through. I'm finishing up that book. I am blogging a lot, at least once a week, and I am working out like crazy. I am fortunate enough to have a lot of equipment. I'm sitting in my cardio room right now, and I also have a free weight room, so I'm doing that. And then I sneak out down to the marina where I have a boat, and it's the best social distancing. I just go out with the throttle down and I zip up and down the river by myself and kind of wrapping it up, but you have so, you know, the races were what you look forward to, getting out, getting active. You're doing the chemotherapy, so again, you have every reason to not be as happy and positive as you are right now. You're literally stuck inside other when you sneak out. We won't say that, but you know what, just tell that person you know, I get it, you get it. But that person who doesn't believe in themselves doesn't think. I'm sure you never thought you would be, you know, running upstairs and being competitive at it. So how do we convince people that they can achieve so much more than they believe. You control everything you do and everything you don't do. No one else is going to make your life better. You have to do it yourself. You just have to take hold of the situation, whether to put it down on paper or you know, if you're just better mentally and you start getting things done and you use resources. When I was diagnosed with multiple miloma, I didn't know what it was. I read up on it, and you just you have to use every resource possible and never be afraid to ask for help. People do want to help, and that's what it takes. Then go for it. And when I hear people are diagnosed with multiple w lomer any other type of cancer, I will talk to them. I want to help them get through it. I want to tell them what they have to go through and that it's not the end of the world. There there's so much to live for. I I I can't wait till I can see my children again. I miss it. My son is here living with me, but I missed my daughter so much. I can't wait for this is over and to just do things again with the family. And something you said earlier that I think is so powerful. It's when you're talking about you know, you don't look to the past, you don't look to the future. And that is what I talked about in that show on self talk that you know, doing my endurance racist taught me Sally was you can't look ahead. My gosh. You go and you say with you like if you look at a and you go, oh, this is how much I have left, or I'm not feeling well. I can't believe I got fifty more flights for me it was, oh, my gosh, I got to you know, twenty more miles or whatever. So just to be in the moment, and so my word, I have a bunch of mantras like you, but it's just be and just deal with this very moment what you need to do right now, right, and that's all we can control. That's that's right. You're only getting this chance on earth, this one time. You better make the best of it. My oncollegists said, I am not going to die a multiple in my moment. I'm gonna probably die doing something crazy like big at the top taking a picture of falling off backwards. To make the best because we don't know what tomorrow brings. Don't worry about tomorrow, don't worry about the past. Just take this moment right now, make the best of it, and just deal with what you can at this moment, right. And that's like, it's crazy to think that that's the simple solution to not stressing. Stress is a choice, right, And people don't want to hear that, but it's a choice exactly exactly. And you're gonna spend as much time stressing as you are as making something better, So why not use that energy to make it better? Right? And you finally said, you know when you were in the hospital and you thought, you know, I'm gonna do this, this race, this event. And you started small and that's the I say, there are no small steps, you know, walking down a hospital corridor, that's how you start. And it goes for everything in life, right, there are no small steps exactly. And I just I set a goal, and once I could walk around the halls, I said, okay, now I'm going to incorporate lunges. And then I incorporated the lunges. And it's always setting the next goal, right, And sometimes you don't achieve it on time, but you don't stop. You keep working towards it. Sometimes you have to, like my book says like it's in a way, sometimes you have to readjust things, but you just don't stop improving. Yeah, you always have to readjust right, Sally. I mean, I've never you know, And that's the whole trick. And that's the art of you know, goal setting is you have to know when to pet it and say, okay, there's an obstacle. Do I go over and around it or through it? And you know, yes, we need to have the plans and the goals, but you have to be willing to say, okay, what do I need to do now? This wasn't working or I'm still going for that goal, but I but I may need to change and that's okay, that's the natural process. A lot of athletes get that because of injuries and sickness and they realize, oh, I got an injury, I have to keep working out. I can't run, I'll swim stuff like that. But people who aren't as athletic as us need to know and put that in focus with other things in their life. And if something gets in the way, you work around it. You work through it. You don't give up. I I it breaks my heart when people they give up and they make bad choices to get through things, be it you know, alcohol or drugs or something like that. It's like, no, that's only going to make the situation worse. You have to make the situation better. And you had a final line on your website about you just keep moving forward. Right, We're gonna have just keep moving forward. And slow is still forward, right, slow as to right? You and me, both you and me both you know fifty one. I'm just I'm not as fast as I used to be. Right, so I've got a few years on you. I under scared she's still beat me in the push up contest. She's not saying, Sally, thank you so much. And when the book comes out, I want to have you back on and I want to talk all about the book because that's just amazing. And everyone check out Sally Sally Kolm dot com just to be inspired. And again, if Sally can do it and to have this attitude and to keep moving forward, that's that's life, Sally, right, And and we're all in it together, and we're all suffering together, and we can all help each other, and um enjoy the moment. That's right. Thank you, Tom, stay healthy, Thanks you too, And don't sneak out on that boat too much. I think I may have to try it. I'll keep it in the water for you, make sure it's okay. Sally. Thank you so much, and I look forward to speaking soon. Have a great day, Bye bye, and we are back. I hope you enjoyed that. I can't tell you how much I did. And I can't tell you how fortunate I feel to have met Sally years ago and to call her friend now. I mean, she is so inspiring. I hope you are inspired. I hope you are motivated and just blown away by by her positive attitude and just her warmth and an enthusiasm for life. Incredible. Thank you Sally again. Amazing, And as I said in the intro Fitness Disruptive, we're gonna talk about exercise. We're gonna talk about strength training and cardiovascular exercise, and talk about nutrition, and we're gonna talk about what we talked about today, the mental side to all of this craziness, because it is so connected. And if you don't have that under control, the exercise and the good nutrition are going to do anything, most likely because the the mindset is too powerful in both directions. And so I'm gonna bring you people with the direction that Sally has and and they're few and far between. She is amazing. She is absolutely amazing, and hopefully you got inspired, as I said, because who she is, she is one in a million. So uh yeah, I hope you enjoyed this, And if you haven't rated the show, please do so, and thank you. If you already have comments and questions, if you can leave them where you listen to the show, please do so, and just hashtag Fitness Disrupted with any posts to social media. I will catch it and my Instagram, my Twitter is Tom h Fit. You can reach out to me that way, and finally, Fitness disrupted dot com you can email me. Go to the site and email me through the site. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Sally, one final time again for for taking the time. You inspire me every time we talk. We need to do more frequently. I'm Tom Holland, Exercise physiologists, certified sports nutritionists. Thank you for listening to say one final time today for the show Three things We control how much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitude, and that is awesome and Sally Kosma is awesome. Believe in yourself. Fitness Disrupted is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio. I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. So I end just about every show saying how there are three things we can control, how much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitude. And my next guest exemplifies all three. But when it comes to attitude, given what she has faced and continues to face, she is beyond amazing. And that's what I do here at Fitness Disrupted. I'm gonna educate. We're gonna talk about exercise science and nutrition and the studies, and I'm gonna have on you know, people like Dr Brad Schonfeld and Dr Daniel Lieberman, the best in the business when it comes to their particular subject areas. I'm gonna do what shows myself, I'm an exercise physiologist, and break down some studies on both as well. And yes, you know my area of expertise when I went back for the Masters with sports psychology as well. For this very reason that the mind is so powerful, and when we want true health and overall wellness, we don't take care of the brain and the attitude and our mood and our focus, then it doesn't matter what we put into our body or how much we exercise, They're all connected. And the brain and our belief in ourselves, as I talk about, is everything controlling what we can. Right. So Sally Kolima is going to come up after the break. And she is such an amazing woman that I met several years ago when I was I coached a cancer charity for ten years and one of the greatest things I've done. And you know, when you take fitness and you take cancer and you take charity and you put those three things together, amazing and put so much into perspective when you're around people like Sally who are in credible people, and she will blow you away. She has so many obstacles cancer, not just with her, her husband and her kids, and she's gonna tell you the story. I don't want to give it all away. But this show is about obstacles, this show is about challenges. This show is about inspiration. She's gonna inspire you, she's gonna motivate you. It's about controlling what you can, as I said, And it's about living in the moment, and it's about perseverance and grit, and finally it's about hope, and we need all those things. And when you meet someone and hear someone's story like Sally Kosma, if you don't finish this podcast saying wow, you know I can do it, and you're gonna be in the moment and you're gonna say sure. Life throws obstacles and challenges at everybody, and you can either accept the excuse or go with the challenge. Embrace the excuse or accept the challenge, because you can feel bad about yourself and that's not gonna get you anywhere. And when you hear Sally's story, yea, if if it's not the story of of perseverance and inspiration and just controlling what you can and being happy in the moment. Oh my gosh. So we met years ago. She blew me away. I said, she is exactly the type of person I want on this show. And so I've said enough, We're gonna bring her on. You're gonna hear her story and and prepare to get super super inspired. All right, when we come back from the break, I'm just gonna let her tell her story. Sally Coxma, We'll be right back, and we are back. Could not I say this with the majority of my guest, but this guest, I can't tell you how excited I am to bring her to you and to to speak with her. It's been a little while for me. Sally Kolima, just this is what this show is about. In my opinion, she is one of the most amazing women I have come into contact with. We met through a charity I coached, and she is a huge part of So, Sally, without further ado, thank you so much for taking the time today, thank you for having me on them. So honored, and it's so good to be with you again. It's been a while, and we were kind of talking before we went live and we started recording, and uh yeah, so we met. I think we were saying, what two thousand fourteen at one of your one of the Empire State Building run ups. Yes, we both did the Empire State Building run up for the Multiple my Loma Research Foundation, and I don't know if you remember how we first met, but I wanted to impress you and we had a one armed push up competition. Did we totally forget and you beat me? I'm sure that was so stupid. My arms were so pumped and fatiege and then I needed them to climb the empire after for you beat me. See she left that part out. Uh, Sally is so fed. But we get way ahead of ourselves. So Sally is one of those people that if she doesn't inspire you and get you to just say, you know, listen, life is full of obstacles and we just we we keep moving forward. And that's literally her motto if you go to her website, Sally COXMA dot com. But Sally started at the beginning, So start, you know, with your story, you know right when when things changed, But we'll start with your husband right so, way back when, Okay, way back when, about eleven years ago, I was leaving a fairytale life. I was working part time facilitating events, and I was diagnosed with multiple my looma and incurable blood cancer. And anytime you hear the words you have cancer, your your whole life has turned upside down. But to make matters worse, five months later, my husband was diagnosed with cancer and eight months later he passed away. Unfortunately, his cancer was netting. He had seven different cancers during his lifetime, and two of my three children tested positive for the same genetic disorder. So I have used this, this negativity in my life and turned it around. And I call it adversity training. And I worked through it, and I hope I can inspire others to work through bad times in their life too, and explained most people you know multiple. Unfortunately it's becoming more and more common, right we're hearing more about it thanks to media. I would say and stuff, but explain to people quickly what it is. Multiple. My moment is a blood cancer. When they told me I had it eleven years ago, I never heard of it. I didn't know what it was. And it's a cancer in your plasma cells. It runs through your white blood cells, and it makes you extremely weak, extremely tired, and you have a low immune system. You're susceptible to a lot of infections. But you know it's that cancer progresses. It can eat away your bone and your organs. So it's it's I'm not taking anything away from another cancer, but it's totally different in a way. To treat, you don't go in operate and radiate. You have to get rid of all those stem cells in your body in order to put new ones in and hope they take. And so what have you gone through as far as those type of procedures to to help you. Three years ago I had my stem cell transplant and for six months prior to the transplant, you are bombed with heavy chemotherapies and steroids to eliminate all the cancer in your body. And after they get you to that level, you have to go through what's called harvesting where they draw out all the blood and the cells out of your body. They run it through a machine. They put the blood back in, but they keep the white cells and the plasma. And as long as those cells are healthy, they will regenerate them back into your body through a transplant. However, if those cells are not healthy you, they will go out and look for a donor and that's a needle in a haystack because you need an exact stem cells match to have those cells put into your body. Right, and we should say that we met again. I was the coach of the multiple mileoma We had a team that did you know, various teams did iron Man's did the run up. Kathy Juicety, who was diagnosed just a couple of years probably right before you, how many years, three or four? Yes, she is she's an angel that thank God, what she has done for multiple miloma patients she started the Multiple Miloma Research Foundation, which is one of the top foundations in the world, and they have brought so many drugs through f d A approval. Before Kathy Gusty started this foundation, there was nothing out there. They told her there was nothing they could do for her, and she didn't take that as an answer, and thank god she didn't. Yeah, and then that's you know I've talked about. You know, I'm the fitness advisor for both flecks. I worked with a couple of different you know companies over the years. And when I was asked at a friend who was thinking of starting this team, and she said, you know what it was. And I actually had a friend whose father had just been diagnosed, a good childhood friend. And when I looked into it, as as Sally is saying, it was a no brainers. I said, you know, fitness and charity and cancer and this specific charity and this amazing woman, Kathy Gotta you gotta look her up, by the way, So she was someone who you know, said there's no resources out there, as Sally was saying, and she took it upon herself to create this incredible resource and consortium that has fast tracked what is the number, now, Sally's got to be I believe Yeah, I think it was twelve. Yes, so twelve drugs this year. Two drugs through FDA approval just this year. Oh, that's amazing. And not only this sounds kind of crazy and I don't want to get into it too much, but a lot of the research that goes into cancer drugs I learned, you know, there's not a lot of sharing of the information. And that was one thing that Kathy really took it upon herself to say, this is nuts. We got to open this dialogue and this information and share the research because the twelve drugs were talking about aren't just for multiple miloma. They work for so many different cancers. Yes, that's exactly what they do. It's an unbelievable foundation. That's why I do so much for them. I run so many events, whether it's there five ks, their twelve hour relays, the two hundred mile run in the Park, and of course any time they're involved in the Empire State Building run up, I jump in and do it. I've done it six times now for them. Okay, so let's go to that. Because so many people are are relatively healthy or you know, I call them the Yeah but Sally, Yeah, but I don't have a lot of time. Yeah, but and I say, you know what, we all have all and never more than right now as we record this show, and we're going through this crazy coronavirus time. But so you're diagnosed, and you you have your husband's issue and what you just went through and now your kids. You know, you could very simply have said enough, like I'm done, but no, you turned it around and you said I'm gonna get going and talk about like you know you started. You had to go back to work, and that led to running stairs. That is correct. Um, Like I mentioned to you earlier, I worked part time and I was facilitating events. One of my biggest events was a five k race, so I was very very active. And when he passed away, I had to go support my family and I went back to work full time and I got a great job. I'm thankful for it. But it was sitting all day in the basement and I felt like a caged animal. In fact, I still to this day, I sit on an exercise ball and I have pedals under the desk and I'm standing as we speak. Though. Yes, but I didn't have the time to go running because I had to be with my children after work they had their events, So at lunchtime I would run up the stairs just to relieve stress and get exercise. It was only a five story parking garage, but I did it. And then as the kids, you know, graduated after work, I would put more time into doing the stairs because it was It was a whole new fitness program for me. I'm a lifelong runner and I lift a lot of weights, but this was put in my body into other shape, like the glutes and and the strength in the upper body because you use the rallings and the multiple My Lomer Research Foundation heard about this and they invited me because invite only, as you know, to the Empire State Building run up and I was hooked. Just I loved it, and since then I've done close to a hundred stair climbs in the past eight years. Not only is she's being modest, not only has Sally done a hundred, which is ridiculous that you go, Okay, that's enough, that's crazy, but you're you're like one in the top, and you've gone, you know, from just doing them to being super competitive. Yes, well I'm kind of super competitive in everything. So yeah, but I mean tell the numbers, you got to it, just the rankings throughout the country, in the world. Well, I didn't even realize this till I was out at Sears Willis Tower and I'm talking to the man who's in charge of the entire world Tower Running Association, which believe me, there is one. I can explain that in a minute. And he said, do you know you're one of the top fifty women in the world. And I'm like, I am, And all of a sudden I went on. I looked at my rankings. I knew I was ranked, you know, top ten in United States, but I looked at my ranking and then I said, I gotta work on this. And before my transplant, I was twentieth overall woman in the world, not my age group, not my old lady age. I was like, wow, So right now I'm back to about in the fifties. But you know, I haven't had a chance to travel as much stair climbing, whether it's in the United States or around the world. It's I like to tell people, it's like the NASCAR circuit. The more high race points you do, the more points you can accumulate in the better you do in them, you know, the more points you'll be awarding. So before my transplant, I was all over the place. Since my transplant, the only place I've gone out of the country is France to do the Eiffel Tower. Other than that, I've been in the country doing them. How amazing was that, though it had to be, it was amazing, as I could say. They invited me when I was in the top shape of my life before treatment, and then I found out I had to have treatment, and I asked them if they could defer me another year, and they did. Thank god. I was the only United States female invited. They only invite a hundred and forty people to this race, yes, so it was it was so cool. My my family and friends that were with me during treatment accompanied me over to France and just to run that iconic building and just look down at the top and see where I came from in a year. It meant so much to me because I transplant in February, the race was a year later in March, so I had to work my tail off to do somewhat respectable in that Just amazing. It's and backtrack a little bit because before even the stem cell you had gone through chemotherapy, and you were saying low dose as well, So it's not like you hadn't gone through a bunch of treatments before that as well. No, No, like I said, for six months prior to your transplant, you are given a cocktail of heavy drugs and then you go into the hospital two times where you're admitted for a few days where they're administering even stronger drugs and that's when you lose your hair and you're sick and all that other stuff, so it wipes out your body. When when I was in the hospital for my transplant, I was in for three weeks. I set goals for myself. That way I would work towards something. In fact, I did my first five mile race three months after my transplant because I knew I had to work for something. It wasn't fast by any means, but I set a goal and I worked for it. And I started by just doing laps around the hospital floors, you know, until I could get out of the hospital and then slowly walked more and you know, break into a slow run. And that's what's so amazing, though, Sally is we talked about that all the time here Obviously, I'm big into the sports psychology and the goal setting and and you know you you obviously you're competitive. Like the fact that you went out and did a five k any or five mile anything after that procedure is incredible. And you know that's one thing that at the moment I met you, like, the energy you give off is to But that's it. It's infectious, and it's it's so positive, and you know it's so easy. I end every show Sally saying, there's three things we control, what how much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitude. And you obviously are phenomenal at all three. But the attitude part it could be the most challenging for you. So you know, I'm sure you get this question all the time, But how do you do that? How do you stay so positive when so many things are thrown at you? Train your brain? Your brain, Your mind controls everything. It controls every aspect of your body. You don't think to pick up the pencil when you want. Your body is just trained. Oh I need to write you pick up the pencil. You have to train your entire body, your entire thought process. I only like to use positive words. You don't want to say, am not going to let her win. You don't even want to put that negative word out there. You're gonna say, I am going to win. Um, Although you know you can't control how other people do in a race. But I'm giving you an example that you never use negativity. Everything has to be positive, and I do with everything in my life. If there's a bad situation, I do two things. I try to look for the positive in it, and I also try to look for the humor in it. Sometimes you gotta you know, you don't want to be insensitive looking for humor, but that is definitely a coping skill I have. The other thing I love to live by is a motto that it says it goes something UM. I don't know if I get there's a verbatim. Depression is living in the past. Anxiety is living in the future. Content is living right now, and I try to think of that. If I dwell too much on the fact of my late husband, UM, it could depress you. If I think too much about my cancer diagnosis or my children's diagnosis with the genetic disorder, it could cause anxiety. But right now, everything in my life is good, and if something comes along that isn't good. Well, I'm going to look for the posit and I'm going to make it better. And that's basically what I do with everything in front of me. I love it. And you know, you hit on so many things there, Sally, you talked about, you know, self talk, which I talked about all the time, just did a podcast on it, and I am just like you. And and that's why, you know, I think I bore the listeners to death with my analogies and and you know, examples of racing. But that's what we're talking about, is the self talk. And I often talk the worst I feel in a race, the bigger the smile is on my face, right, because the body doesn't know any differently, right, So I say, like at the end of an iron man, I look like nuts because I had this huge smile and the body's breaking down. That's the thing. If you're running a race and it hurts and you start saying, oh I hurt, my my legs hurt. Your legs are only gonna feel worse. You gotta be like, I feel great, this is amazing, and then your body, your feet off of it. And that's what I do, no matter how horrible. I feel. I don't dwell on the negative. I try to find something positive. In fact, when I was training for a marathon, you know, you go out on those twenty mile runs and something hurts you, I'd be like, Okay, my knees hurt now, but in three miles, my ankle's gonna hurt. Yes, right? Is that true? You know, you go for a little run and there's always gonna be a pain somewhere, and as long as it's not the bad pain, you work through, right, there's always gonna be And everyone, I really encourage you. And I love that Sally, you know, got us here because I just did a whole show on self talk and it's exactly and Sally, I use that I feel great. I mean, how simple is that? And when and you know you have leg pain, instead of thinking, oh my leg hurts, you go my legs feel great. And if your brain tells your body that enough times, it changes the way you feel. It's true. And that's what I do. That's what I do. And believe me, it's not fun and it's not easy climbing up you know, the empire state building, but you have to be positive the entire time up and then you know when you get there, the endorphins, when you get to that top, the endorphins are just going crazy. And you have that that high for weeks along with that climber's cloth. Now I have to most people have done stairs, and they know how challenging they are. I am an endurance guy. I am not a sprinter and anaerobic guy. And the first time I did, I did it I think three or four times. Um, let's put it this way. I have only thrown up once in my life at the end of a race, and it was chasing Natalie Morales up the stairs because we joke about how you know, you and I were going to do it together and then someone will throw the media. As the coach of this charity, I had to carry the go pro and she's really fast and they let her go ahead of me and I tried to catch up, and I eventually caught up, and then she eventually dropped me again. But Sally is underplaying. Not only is it so ridiculously you know high and you're doing so many stairs, but the people don't realize and I didn't either. The air is so dry that and the dusty that gets um knocked up is crazy. Right, It's a totally unique event in a horrible way, horribly great way. There's nothing else like it in the world. There's nothing I have tried, but it's this, Hey, my first empire. I didn't know what to expect either. And it's eighties six floors, but by the ten floor, your heart is like jumping out of your body. You're just can I get this heart rate under control? And the once you feel like you have the heart rate under control, your your thighs are like you're fighting grab in your size, were like, what are you doing? So you pull more with your upper body and then you just start feeling it in the arms and you're you're using everything, including your brain to get up those stairs. And it takes anywhere from right, I think the top people are like holy cat, like nine or ten minutes the top I think I was. I was definitely slower, probably twice that somewhere on eighteen nineteen and somewhere around there. I would rather run for three hours than do that. Eighteen minutes is so brutal. And let me say this too. I don't know if I ever told you this. I don't think we started seeing each other since, but I did it with Amy Freeze, right, you've met her, I'm sure many times I often talk about how I have zero sense of direction and if this doesn't prove it, this is the one thing we got. No way we got of course running up the Empire, straight up the stair do you know where there's that one part where you kind of transition to this it's impossible to run down the hole and they lead you to another staircase. I want h percent blame Amy because I was following her. Uh, we blame each other. But we got lost. We were we were in the wrong hallway and at the backtrack. Yes, so just I'm throwing myself under the belts. We literally got lost. Oh you go. So this is why Sally my stress dream before every iron Man, every marathon, and anyone who's done any race like that or any race and has those stress dreams before, it's about getting lost. It's about getting lost on the course because I'm that bad at it. So what is next for you? By the way, so you're now like you're looking great and feeling great. For me, what is next to her? All my stare climbs are postponed, So that's all on hold. So right now. Why I am stuck at home. The doctors want me to stay absolutely secluded in isolation because being on this chemo therapy therapy suppresses my immune system even more. So i'd be very, very careful during COVID nineteen. I am getting a lot done inside. I'm great with time management. I wake up every day and I have my list of things to do, and I like to cross those things on. So I am getting a lot of write and done. I have a book coming out this year. Life gets in the way, and that's exactly it. You know, you think you're doing something and life takes you on another path. To make the best of it, you use grit to get through. I'm finishing up that book. I am blogging a lot, at least once a week, and I am working out like crazy. I am fortunate enough to have a lot of equipment. I'm sitting in my cardio room right now, and I also have a free weight room, so I'm doing that. And then I sneak out down to the marina where I have a boat, and it's the best social distancing. I just go out with the throttle down and I zip up and down the river by myself and kind of wrapping it up, but you have so, you know, the races were what you look forward to, getting out, getting active. You're doing the chemotherapy, so again, you have every reason to not be as happy and positive as you are right now. You're literally stuck inside other when you sneak out. We won't say that, but you know what, just tell that person you know, I get it, you get it. But that person who doesn't believe in themselves doesn't think. I'm sure you never thought you would be, you know, running upstairs and being competitive at it. So how do we convince people that they can achieve so much more than they believe. You control everything you do and everything you don't do. No one else is going to make your life better. You have to do it yourself. You just have to take hold of the situation, whether to put it down on paper or you know, if you're just better mentally and you start getting things done and you use resources. When I was diagnosed with multiple miloma, I didn't know what it was. I read up on it, and you just you have to use every resource possible and never be afraid to ask for help. People do want to help, and that's what it takes. Then go for it. And when I hear people are diagnosed with multiple w lomer any other type of cancer, I will talk to them. I want to help them get through it. I want to tell them what they have to go through and that it's not the end of the world. There there's so much to live for. I I I can't wait till I can see my children again. I miss it. My son is here living with me, but I missed my daughter so much. I can't wait for this is over and to just do things again with the family. And something you said earlier that I think is so powerful. It's when you're talking about you know, you don't look to the past, you don't look to the future. And that is what I talked about in that show on self talk that you know, doing my endurance racist taught me Sally was you can't look ahead. My gosh. You go and you say with you like if you look at a and you go, oh, this is how much I have left, or I'm not feeling well. I can't believe I got fifty more flights for me it was, oh, my gosh, I got to you know, twenty more miles or whatever. So just to be in the moment, and so my word, I have a bunch of mantras like you, but it's just be and just deal with this very moment what you need to do right now, right, and that's all we can control. That's that's right. You're only getting this chance on earth, this one time. You better make the best of it. My oncollegists said, I am not going to die a multiple in my moment. I'm gonna probably die doing something crazy like big at the top taking a picture of falling off backwards. To make the best because we don't know what tomorrow brings. Don't worry about tomorrow, don't worry about the past. Just take this moment right now, make the best of it, and just deal with what you can at this moment, right. And that's like, it's crazy to think that that's the simple solution to not stressing. Stress is a choice, right, And people don't want to hear that, but it's a choice exactly exactly. And you're gonna spend as much time stressing as you are as making something better, So why not use that energy to make it better? Right? And you finally said, you know when you were in the hospital and you thought, you know, I'm gonna do this, this race, this event. And you started small and that's the I say, there are no small steps, you know, walking down a hospital corridor, that's how you start. And it goes for everything in life, right, there are no small steps exactly. And I just I set a goal, and once I could walk around the halls, I said, okay, now I'm going to incorporate lunges. And then I incorporated the lunges. And it's always setting the next goal, right, And sometimes you don't achieve it on time, but you don't stop. You keep working towards it. Sometimes you have to, like my book says like it's in a way, sometimes you have to readjust things, but you just don't stop improving. Yeah, you always have to readjust right, Sally. I mean, I've never you know, And that's the whole trick. And that's the art of you know, goal setting is you have to know when to pet it and say, okay, there's an obstacle. Do I go over and around it or through it? And you know, yes, we need to have the plans and the goals, but you have to be willing to say, okay, what do I need to do now? This wasn't working or I'm still going for that goal, but I but I may need to change and that's okay, that's the natural process. A lot of athletes get that because of injuries and sickness and they realize, oh, I got an injury, I have to keep working out. I can't run, I'll swim stuff like that. But people who aren't as athletic as us need to know and put that in focus with other things in their life. And if something gets in the way, you work around it. You work through it. You don't give up. I I it breaks my heart when people they give up and they make bad choices to get through things, be it you know, alcohol or drugs or something like that. It's like, no, that's only going to make the situation worse. You have to make the situation better. And you had a final line on your website about you just keep moving forward. Right, We're gonna have just keep moving forward. And slow is still forward, right, slow as to right? You and me, both you and me both you know fifty one. I'm just I'm not as fast as I used to be. Right, so I've got a few years on you. I under scared she's still beat me in the push up contest. She's not saying, Sally, thank you so much. And when the book comes out, I want to have you back on and I want to talk all about the book because that's just amazing. And everyone check out Sally Sally Kolm dot com just to be inspired. And again, if Sally can do it and to have this attitude and to keep moving forward, that's that's life, Sally, right, And and we're all in it together, and we're all suffering together, and we can all help each other, and um enjoy the moment. That's right. Thank you, Tom, stay healthy, Thanks you too, And don't sneak out on that boat too much. I think I may have to try it. I'll keep it in the water for you, make sure it's okay. Sally. Thank you so much, and I look forward to speaking soon. Have a great day, Bye bye, and we are back. I hope you enjoyed that. I can't tell you how much I did. And I can't tell you how fortunate I feel to have met Sally years ago and to call her friend now. I mean, she is so inspiring. I hope you are inspired. I hope you are motivated and just blown away by by her positive attitude and just her warmth and an enthusiasm for life. Incredible. Thank you Sally again. Amazing, And as I said in the intro Fitness Disruptive, we're gonna talk about exercise. We're gonna talk about strength training and cardiovascular exercise, and talk about nutrition, and we're gonna talk about what we talked about today, the mental side to all of this craziness, because it is so connected. And if you don't have that under control, the exercise and the good nutrition are going to do anything, most likely because the the mindset is too powerful in both directions. And so I'm gonna bring you people with the direction that Sally has and and they're few and far between. She is amazing. She is absolutely amazing, and hopefully you got inspired, as I said, because who she is, she is one in a million. So uh yeah, I hope you enjoyed this, And if you haven't rated the show, please do so, and thank you. If you already have comments and questions, if you can leave them where you listen to the show, please do so, and just hashtag Fitness Disrupted with any posts to social media. I will catch it and my Instagram, my Twitter is Tom h Fit. You can reach out to me that way, and finally, Fitness disrupted dot com you can email me. Go to the site and email me through the site. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Sally, one final time again for for taking the time. You inspire me every time we talk. We need to do more frequently. I'm Tom Holland, Exercise physiologists, certified sports nutritionists. Thank you for listening to say one final time today for the show Three things We control how much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitude, and that is awesome and Sally Kosma is awesome. Believe in yourself. Fitness Disrupted is a production of I Heart Radio. 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