Welcome to extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-ed science, research,

tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the

youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained in board-certified in the Mayo Clinic,

I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board

certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of

health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new

era where we are creating a new health care system, no longer focused on disease management,

but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to

proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span.

Now that it's a new year, I'm sure a lot of you have renewed your commitment to fitness,

and many of you are hitting the gym hard. Congrats to you. Before I congratulate you too much, however,

I know that about 80% of you, according to some studies, won't be in the gym too much longer,

unfortunately. So what can we do to make sure this habit sticks? Well, one thing that I have found

to be incredibly helpful is to understand where you

currently stand in relationship to the population for your current level of fitness, and to set

small, achievable incremental goals for each quarter of this year. So that's what I'm going to

talk about today and how you could do that for yourself. I cannot tell you how helpful this has been for my patients who not only stick to their gym

routine for the long term, but actually way exceed their goals for the year.

When you understand where you are and where you should be, and then you follow that data,

there is a much lower chance of you falling off the wagon.

The old adage of you cannot change what you don't measure also applies.

Making progress is a huge motivator.

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