Archive for category General
A Conversation With Jay Jacobs…. by Suzy Hoover
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on September 4th, 2011
What a great way to spend a Wednesday morning… Sitting in a Starbucks parking lot using their Wi-Fi while talking to Jay Jacobs from Season 11 of The Biggest Loser. Some of you may be thinking “Jay…Jay… who was he?” Well, I was just like you. In fact, until the last few episodes, Jay said he laid low on purpose so that he wouldn’t make any waves and make it as far as possible in the game.
His plan worked perfectly and he made it all the way to the final four where unfortunately for him, America voted for Irene to go to the final weigh in so that there would be an all girl finale. What has caught my attention about Jay was not his actual time on the show, but his time afterward.
I began following Jay about four months ago on Twitter. I have been impressed by his openness and honesty and thought, “I have to talk to this guy.” So here it is my first blog interview with Jay Jacobs from Season 11 of TBL.
As a former contestant myself, I remember all the thoughts I had at that final weigh-in so I was dying to hear what he went through. Much to my surprise, his experience was different than mine. You see, everything leading up to the final weigh-in when you are on the show, 9 months in my case, is dedicated to getting the best results you can for that one moment. I was nervous, anxious, self conscious, and frankly in a lot of pain.
Jay, on the other hand, told me that he felt great and had a sense of complete accomplishment. In fact, he remembers the show doctor, Dr. Huizenga, telling him that he was at his perfect healthy weight for himself. It was refreshing to hear that he hadn’t gone through the same mental anguish that I had.
Life after the finale for Jay was a whole different story than the months that led up to that night. Jay and his family took a two week vacation. Not only did Jay take a vacation from work, he also took a vacation from working out and counting calories. They went to Disneyland and Carmel. I remember seeing his tweets from this two week period and thinking “I can’t wait to hear about this.”
I was actually proud of Jay for doing this. He made a conscious choice for two weeks to give his body rest and freedom from the strict “NO” way of living that you go through when you are on the show. After two weeks of total freedom from the BL life, Jay said that he noticed he could “feel his skin in his pants” again, meaning they were getting tight!
You see, this was the first time in his life that he didn’t have to shop at the “Big and Tall” stores and he was loving it. After his vacation, Jay jumped up to 241 pounds from his finale weight of 219. He gained 22 pounds on vacation.
Now let me give you all the inside scoop. Pretty much everyone gains 5-15 pounds after the finale in just water weight. Jay’s gain isn’t super shocking, but it was enough to get him going again. After the vacation Jay new that he needed constant accountability so he began tweeting his weekly weight.
I was baffled the first time I saw an actual picture of his scale at home. That takes a tone of courage! For Jay, this was his guarantee that the number on the scale would go down instead of up. He has continued to do pictures and the scale has continued to go down. As of this morning, Jay weighed in at 230.2 pounds. That is only 11 pounds from his finale weight.
Another thing that has kept Jay accountable is that he has signed up for the ING New York Marathon which he will run this November. Jay, along with a handful of other “Losers”, are all running for various charities.
“Where will you be in five years?” I asked Jay. He told me he has plans to write books and develop product in order to continue to spread the message about health and wellness with others.
I think the best thing I heard from Jay today was that he has nothing better to do but to enjoy the rest of his life. Right on Jay!
If you would like to follow Jay’s progress, and his journey along with me, you can follow him on Twitter at @JLynnJacobs or on his Facebook at Jay Jacobs.
Here Comes Suzy!!!
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on August 31st, 2011
I am so excited to tell you that Suzy Hoover, a runner up on NBC’s hit reality show The Biggest Loser, will be blogging right here at Matt-Hoover.com. I am a big fan of Suzy’s, and not just because she is my wife. Suzy will be talking about her internet show Weighing in With Suzy, a show that recaps Biggest Loser episodes as well as interview current and present contestants.
For those of you ladies who are looking for tips and inspiration from an awesome woman, she can provide that too.
This is going to be awesome!
What Was Unresolved in the Past is Unresolved Today…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on August 26th, 2011
I feel like I have two lives; life before Biggest Loser and life after Biggest Loser. Life before Biggest Loser consisted of poor choices and dissapointment. Life after has been filled with joy and excitement. Of course there have been struggles, mainly with my weight, but things are so much different.
After the show I began a new life. A life with a beautiful and loving wife and two amazing little boys that I can’t get enough of even though I am with them everyday.
My life is so drastically different that I was completely caught off gaurd when my past came back to haunt me in a big way.
I have been offered a posiiton with a large company. These days, one of the conditions of employment is a thorough background check. After filling out all of the paper work, accepting the position, and even having a start date, I was shocked when I got a letter telling me that the offer was put on hold because of an issue in my background check. It was reported on the report that I hadn’t received my degree. Most of you know that I was so excited to announce that I had in fact graduated form the University of Iowa this past May so I was devastated to see that according to this background check, I had lied about it.
After finding out what had happened, I was reminded of how past choices can still affect us today even if we have moved on.
My journey to earn my degree has taken 16 years. At oone point in my education life, I just quit school and left. I had a whole semester of F’s for grades. At the time I felt sorry for myself and chose to quit and run off. I had no idea just how much that decision would haunt me. In short, when I re-enrolled at the University of Iowa on academic probation I needed to earn nearly straight A’s. I did that. I went through graduation and thought everything had been squared away.
Fast forward to last week. Part of the background check is checking education references. When the company doing the investigation contacted the National Clearing House that list those who have earned degrees, my name wasn’t there. According to the investigation company, I had lied about having a degree. As you can probably imagine, that is not a good thing for a perspective employer to see.
I’ll spare the details, but I needed to file a dispute because I knew that I had completed the requirements to earn my degree. In one quick phone call I found out what had happened.
Although I had completed my coursework, there was an unreported grade from when I quit school over 15 years ago. Having the unreported grade on my transcript meant that the University of Iowa could not report that I had officially graduated. After one more phone call and what seemed like the longest day of waiting in my life, it was taken care of and the university was able to report that I had in fact met all requirements and did, in fact, earn my degree.
It has been heart-wrenching to have to wait through all of this but it is an excellent lesson to learn. Just because we hope something goes away doesn’t mean it will. If I had taken the proper steps before just up and quitting school, all of this could have been avoided. At that point in my life I felt sorry for myself and that I had it so bad, the only option was for me to leave school.
That was BS! Things were bad because I had made them bad and rather than think through my actions and how it could affect me long term, I chose the easy way out and ran. You can only run so long from the rough things in your life before they will eventually catch up to you. It took 16 years for mine to catch up with me, but last week they finally did.
The point of today’s blog isn’t to whine about my situation right now, it’s to drive home the point of the lesson I learned this week. Things that are left unresolved, be it yesterday or years ago, are still unresolved today. The only way to keep those unresolved issues from catching up with you is to face them and deal with them. Running from them won’t fix them, hiding from them won’t fix them, and for damn sure just ignoring them won’t fix them. The only way to truly put those things in the past is to do everything you can to resolve them.
It may be a conversation that needs to be had, a phone call that needs to be made, or some self examination that needs to be done, but I can promise you that by taking the action, a weight will be lifted. Only then can we be free from the past that we may not want to remember.
Remember, if it was unresolved yesterday, it is unresolved today. We can’t wish it or hope it away, we need to face it head on so that we can move forward. Let me reassure you that dealing with the things that we have been afraid to is much less painful than carrying them around.
See you later… -Matt
Where Have I Been?
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on August 25th, 2011
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I decided to spend some time with my family and take some private time. It was both refreshing and enlightening. I will begin posting videos as well as doing written posts today. I’m looking foward to being back. See you soon!
Matt
It’s Been A Like Time Since I’ve Had These Feelings…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on June 24th, 2011
