Yesterday I talked about what it is like having people know you and how contestants are real people and how we should all be nice to one another and give hugs.  Well, that is kind of what I talked about.  Today I am going to talk about how The Biggest Loser changed me personally.

Before I went on the show I was angry.  As most people know, I was a college wrestler at The University of Iowa.  I pretty much blew it there.  It wasn’t a talent issue, it was a commitment issue.  I was more committed to partying and telling people I was a wrestler than I was to training and actually being a wrestler.

Long story short, I quit the team and left school only a few credits short of a degree.  I had never quit anything in my life up until that point and once I learned how easy it was to quit, it got easier and easier for me to do so.  I went from being a 177 pound athlete to over 350 pounds in a very short time.  The bigger I got, the less I cared.

I drank a lot and ate a lot.  Prior to going on the show it was not uncommon for me to put down two bottles of rum in one night.  I don’t know what happened after they were gone.  I just know that I would wake up and they were gone.  Food was something that I used to medicate when I couldn’t drink.

I would go through the McDonald’s drive through and order two value meals.  Even though I knew I was going to eat both of them, I thought maybe the person handing me the food would think I was getting them for two people.  The other thing that I use to do was eat them really fast.  Like somehow if I ate really fast the calories wouldn’t count!  I will talk more about this at length on another day and how those habits still affect me today.

My friends knew me as a Chris Farley type (I did have a spot on impression) who was the happy, fat, drunk guy.  I had lots of friends that were girls but none that were really interested in being my girlfriend.  I became resigned to the fact that this was how my life was going to be.  After all, I deserved it for blowing it at Iowa.  Let me summarize my life in just a couple words.  I was a miserable mess.

Fast forward.  I show up on the ranch weighing 339 pounds.  You may not believe it but I actually lost weight before taping began because while we were sequestered before the show I couldn’t drink.  I also didn’t want to look like a pig so I didn’t eat very much.  Kind of ironic isn’t it?  I weighed over 300 pounds but didn’t want people to know I ate bad!

Even though I was obese I thought I could still do things like I did when I was a college wrestler.  I couldn’t.  It was a deflating moment.  I finally realized how bad things had gotten for me.  The infamous clip of Jillian and I talking or should I say her talking and me bawling my eyes out has recieved several thousand hits on Youtube.  As rough as it was, that breakdown was the beginning of my transformation on the inside.

I was still angry, still walking around with a chip on my shoulder and still fat, but I was beginning to change whether I knew it or not.  Like I have said before, when I was on the ranch we didn’t have TV, internet, magazines, or much else besides gym equipment to keep us occupied.  What I did have was myself.

Sometimes being alone with yourself is very frightening.  Especially if you have no idea who you are or that the person you thought you were really isn’t you at all.  When I was finally forced to be alone and deal with my issues I went through the same range of emotions that people go through when they experience a loss or a death of someone close to them.

Along with losing weight I was losing years of baggage and in essence, my old self.  It wasn’t until I arrived home after being on the ranch for all those months by myself that I realized just how much I had changed.

See you tomorrow!

Biggest Loser, diet, exercise, fitness, Jillian Michaels, life lessons, Matt Hoover

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010, 4:18 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.