A Healthy Life, a Fit Father of Four Who Talks About Health, Fitness, Parenting, Marriage & Money

Good health is not complicated. Focus on these four Pillars, and better health will follow.

Health and fitness are about more than just your physical body. If your health plan is making you miserable, you need to embrace a renewed mindset.

Little changes in your diet can make a big difference in your health. Just one or two substitutions could be the breakthrough you're looking for.

When you create sustainable healthy habits, you can eventually attain the ability to have almost complete control over your body composition - gaining or losing body mass as you decide. That is a fun place to be, but it doesn't happen with a 60 or 90 day program. It happens as a result of long term sustainable healthy habits. Listen to this episode for tips on how to get there.

Lifting weights is empowering. It turns your body into a calorie burning machine, and it makes so many activities in life easier. Some women worry that they're going to bulk up if they start lifting. In this episode, Rachel talks about how unlikely that is and some of the awesome benefits - like defined arms - that are more likely to happen.

Being healthy is about much more than avoiding illness and decrepitude. It's about feeling good - body, mind and spirit. If that's your goal, there are a lot more reasons to get up and workout.

Today, Rachel takes the lead in the discussion and talks about staying healthy and fit during and after her four pregnancies, which ranged from being 26 to 38 years old and from being a runner to lifting weights and doing high intensity interval training (HIIT).

Rest days are an important part of your health and fitness program, but for some people they are filled with guilt; or one day turns into a week and derailment from their fitness program. Listen to this episode to learn how to avoid both.

My wife Rachel joins the show today as we discuss the ways working out together has blessed our relationship - as well as our health. Also, be sure to listen to the next episode when Rachel will be talking about staying in shape during and after her four pregnancies.

Episode #24 (I think...) Back from a quarantine hiatus, I discuss how good health and fitness is all about good habits - and that's good news. Come back for more episodes as we are moving to a new format with Scott and Rachel discussing health, fitness, family, relationships and just life in general as they drive to and from the gym each day.

Simply Scott is about getting great health and benefits through sustainable life habits. Strength training needs to be part of your fitness program. It yields better results in less time than cardio, and I say that as someone who spent over 20 years running competitively. Check out this episode to learn more about the benefits of adding strength training to your fitness program.

Spending half a day shopping at farmers markets and fancy grocers is one way to have a healthier diet, but that's not simple or sustainable for most people. Supplements are an alternative way to "supplement" a healthier diet and achieve your health and fitness goals. To spend your money wisely, you need to know what to look for in a supplement. That's the goal of this episode.

This was a tough episode to record, because body position and movement are critical to understanding mobility, and that is hard to convey with just audio. Still, if I do nothing more here than make you aware of how important it is to improve your range of motion and to enjoy the freedom of moving your body where and how you want without pain, then this episode is worth it. Please take time to check out the other video resources I mention in the podcast, and find the one that works best for you.

You spend 8+ hours a day, five days a week, at work. Little changes in how you spend those 2,000 hours per year can have a big impact on your health and fitness. Check out this episode of Simply Scott for ideas on how to create a healthier work environment.

If the title of this episode resonates with you, that means you have started your journey to better health and fitness. Hurray! The bad news is, you may have stopped seeing progress. You are not alone, and there are several common reasons people hit a plateau and stop seeing results or even start to feel they're slipping backwards. Check out the reasons covered in this episode to see if one of them might be holding you back. Or, if you haven't plateaued, listen to avoid these common progress killers.

The title of this episode says it all, working out with your significant other is relationship gold. If you've never tried it, find something you're both interested in doing and commit to giving it an honest effort.

This episode addresses healthy ways to encourage kids of all ages to be physically active. Developing a love of exercise, sports or active play as a child helps create a lifelong positive relationship with fitness. Start young, but start right.

People don't give the push-up enough credit. Its simplicity, and the fact that we all did them in grade school P.E. class, can make it easy to discount the incredible benefits and variety of this movement - not to mention the fact that you can literally do push-ups almost anywhere. After you listen to the podcast, check out these links for videos my wife and I made about push-up technique and progressions, from beginner to superfit and looking for a more challenging push-up movement. Beginner: https://youtu.be/4kj8SL6HaMg; Advanced: https://youtu.be/pBo_Uxg0CYg

Rachel and I made one change to our diet that brought us better results than anything else. We stopped eating bread and pasta, and we focused on eating more protein and veggies. This was a tough change for former distance runners, who grew up during the time of carb loading and grains being the base of the food pyramid. How extreme was this change? Let's just say I kept a food diary for my track coach in college and got a thumbs up for having 70% carbs in my diet. Cutting out bread and pasta was a simple move that changed everything.

Feel free to disagree - everyone is entitled to be wrong - but lunges are the single greatest lower body exercise that you can do without equipment. No other movement works your glutes, quads, hamstrings and calves - did I mention glutes? - and isolates each leg the way lunges do. So crank it up and enjoy this episode about how to incorporate lunges into your fitness plan. If you are looking for video instruction, check out the YouTube channel my wife and I made and pick a video with lunges in the workout. Here's a link:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCqsaOgnen2S_zQlviIebQ

If you want to lose body fat, you have to burn more calories than you consume. That's it. That's the secret. Otherwise, your body is going to store those extra calories as fat. In this episode I discuss ways to make achieving that daily calorie deficit simple - so that you can actually achieve it and see results!

Strength. Speed. Power. Athleticism. Good posture. These are all heavily dependant on the muscle groups on the backside of your body, but because we don't see those as easily in the mirror, they're often neglected. Don't neglect this key element of fitness and health. Check out this episode for great core exercises to strengthen muscle groups on your posterior.

It's really hard to make yourself do something you don't enjoy. Exercise that feels like a chore is not sustainable, which means you won't get results. Listen to this podcast to discover ideas for finding exercise you enjoy.

Just like exercise, your eating plan and habits need to be healthy AND sustainable. In this episode I share some tips on planning ahead to avoid unhealthy eating - including how to stop yourself from eating those between-meal snacks that sabotage so many people's otherwise reasonable and healthy diets.

It's simple. Most of us - me included - need to sleep more. Increasingly, research and anecdotal accounts from famous successful individuals are starting to confirm what we all intuitively know: If you get enough sleep, you have a better attitude, be less stressed, be less prone to injury and illness and generally achieve more in your endeavors. Listen to this episode, and accept the challenge to go for a full week with 8 hours of sleep per night. See if it's not worth giving up this TV shows you had to miss to get to bed earlier. I know it will be!

I have to thank a friend from high school that gave me the idea for this episode. As my children have gotten older, childcare during workouts has become much easier, but it took a bit more effort and coordination when they were too small to stay home alone. In this episode, I discuss several possible solutions for people with young children that want to workout. If this isn't you, still give this a listen so you can empathize with someone else in your life and maybe offer to lend a hand with childcare so that person can exercise. They'll be grateful to you for life. If you're looking for ideas to workout at home, check out the YouTube channel my wife and I made with full length workout videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCqsaOgnen2S_zQlviIebQ

You are one being - a body, a mind and a spirit all wrapped into one whole person. If your health and fitness goals are just about achieving a certain appearance or fitting into those jeans, or even getting your blood pressure down, you need to know that there is so much more to be had. Take it to a higher level, or you are going to miss out on something so much more fulfilling and sustainable. If you're ready for something a little different, give this a listen, and let me know what you think.

If you want to know the single most versatile piece of exercise equipment, then this podcast is for you. I could probably list 50+ exercises that you could do with this piece of equipment, but here's a shorter list to get you started with dumbbells: bench press []overhead press []curls []tricep extensions []squats []lunges []deficit push-ups []turkish getups []bent over row []bent over fly []lateral raises []front raises []shrugs []box step overs []thrusters []cleans []snatch []renegade row []straight-leg deadlift AND MORE!

Looking back on my fitness journey, that really got started in 1992, I saw a common factor throughout the years - I enjoyed working out more, worked out more consistently and saw better results when I worked out with other people. In my marriage, working out together has been an amazing way to make an already good marriage even better. I hope this podcast encourages you to find a workout partner and for both of you to find more joy and better results on you fitness journeys!

In my younger years I would have spat at the title of this podcast. Then I was introduced to real life of career, marriage, parenthood, homeownership - you know, adulting. It became apparent to me that I needed to change my philosophy and accept that some days a 20 minute workout was all I had time to do, and that is better than doing nothing (not to be confused with intentional rest days, which are important. So check it out, and if you are running short on time and need a quick and effective workout, checkout the YouTube Channel my wife and I made, F3 Fitness, with full workout videos that have workouts as short as 7 minutes and up to about 25 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCqsaOgnen2S_zQlviIebQ

Even though I was primarily a cardio athlete for over 20 years, it has become incredibly apparent to me that strength training brings results in less time. In this episode, I discuss the every minute on the minute (EMOM) method of programming a workout as a simple but effective way to add strength training to your fitness program. Check out these videos for tips on push-ups and a little EMOM I did on the beach in Santa Monica. Push-up Progression: https://youtu.be/4kj8SL6HaMg; Making Push-ups Harder: https://youtu.be/pBo_Uxg0CYg Santa Monica EMOM: https://youtu.be/HgCI0Bn58Rw

In this episode I address simple ways to set yourself up for success. These are habits I've developed to help me workout on a consistent basis and to achieve my fitness and health goals. I hope you find them helpful, too.

Goals are awesome, but when you go too hard too soon, you create an unsustainable situation that is sure to lead to burnout and disappointment. Listen to learn about using simplicity as a model for success in fitness and life.