Posts Tagged curb cravings
Road Trip Time…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on July 6th, 2010
I will be heading out soon for the San Francisco Triathlon soon. I love road trips so I volunteered to drive the equipment down from Seattle. The trip is scheduled to take 12 hours. That is a long time to be in the car alone; especially when you consider that in the past, that is where I turned my eating common sense off.
I have been doing really well. I have found that the more I plan the easier it is for me. Wow, what a revelation! Planning works! I will be packing my food and drink so that when I stop at the gas stations all I have to do is fill up and leave. Rest stops will be at the ever so clean confines of the interstate rest areas.
Gas stations make sense, but why the rest areas? Because for me, there is little enjoyment in stale candy from a vending machine. I know that if I stop at the rest areas I will be in a safe zone as opposed to stoping at a convenience store or restaurant. I’m not avoiding; I’m planning.
Another thing that I will be doing is listening to T.Harv Eckers Millionaire Mind CD’s. I have listened to them before and it is time to brush up on some things. What a better time to do it than alone in the car with no distractions. Car trips don’t have to be wasted time. I am going to use this time to make my mind sharper.
I feel like I have a pretty good plan in place now it is time to execute it. I will let you know tomorrow how it goes.
See you tomorrow!
Takin My Own Advice….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 10th, 2010
Have you ever just wanted to kick yourself for not listening to yourself? I know I have. In fact, as a speaker I have been telling other people the keys to being fit. I am going to admit that sometimes the hardest person to motivate is myself.
I bet I am not alone. I see people every year come off The Biggest Loser vowing never to gain weight back or put all their weight back on. Guess what, every year someone who said those words in front of millions inevitably does the exact thing they said they wouldn’t.
I’ve experienced it myself. I gained weight after the show. I am talking about weight beyond the simple act of re hydrating after cutting weight for the finale. In fact, I got myself fat again. I believe a lot of it had to do with focusing so hard on not gaining weight again.
Let me explain what I mean. I have found in my own life that what I focus on is what I get. More specifically, the way I speak internally almost always manifests itself. Did you know that studies have shown that our subconscience is not capable of interpreting negative words? If I say “Don’t eat that brownie.” My subconscious mind hears “Eat that brownie.” It has been proven over and over that no matter how many times we put a negative word in front of a comment to our self we don’t hear it.
When it comes to weight gain I have found that the more I focus on what I don’t want to do the more I am drawn to it. “Don’t eat too much.” is a signal to my brain to go for it. ”Don’t sleep in tomorrow.” almost always lead to extra time in bed.
Positive phrases yield positive results. ” I want to eat lean meats and veggies and drink more water.” leads me to crave those things. Our brains are like giant computers that need to have data input manually. The type of data we put in is the type of results we get. Make sense?
To be successful we need to be constantly feeding ourselves positive input. Leave off the negatives when you talk to yourself and see what happens in your own life. I am going to set a goal to do this for one week. I hope you will join me and I will revisit this topic next week. Let’s see what happens when we listen to our own positive advice!
See you tomorrow!
Let’s Have a Plan for Thanksgiving Day
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on November 25th, 2009
It’s heeere…. A day that strikes fear in many trying to stick to a nutrition plan. Thanksgiving. I want to share what my day is going to be like tomorrow and why I am not worried about whether or not I will be able to “make it through” one of the most notorious days for over eating.
As I said yesterday, Thanksgiving use to be a day for me to consume mass amounts of delicious foods and get rip roaring drunk while watching a crappy team (Detroit Lions) lose another Thanksgiving day game. Things have changed a lot for me, at least some things. I don’t eat enough food to induce a food coma and I don’t get rip roaring drunk, but the Lions are still a crappy team.
Here is what my day is going to be like tomorrow. If you choose to implement some of these things you can save yourself the emotional distress of having blown right past your alloted calorie count for the day.
I am lucky in that my gym is open in the morning. Many gyms are open until around noon. I will get up and head to the gym where I will partake in a spin class. After class I will sit in the sauna and do some stretching. I love the sauna because I get a good sweat and it really helps my tight old muscles relax.
When I get home I’ll help Suzy clean up the house and then I’m off to cut and split some wood. Chopping wood is an amazing core workout. Not only will I get a workout, but I’ll save money on heating costs by using our wood stove.
We will eat around 2 pm. On the menu at the Hoover house, Turkey (not deep fried), mashed potatoes using red potatoes and prepared with skim milk and chicken broth, a green salad, fresh green beans that are steamed, sweet potatoes without all the candy on top (gasp), and a couple deserts. Suzy’s low cal pumpkin pie pudding and mini pecan pies (the size of a Reece’s peanut butter cup) with fat free cool whip.
We always start our meals off with the salad. It helps us fill up on good stuff and curbs the urge to over eat on everything else. Here is where it gets tricky and where many of us fall apart. After we are done eating we will put all of the food away so it’s not setting out to tempt us the rest of the day. Maybe the most important thing that we do is package up any left over desert and send it home with whoever wants it.
As we are cleaning we chat with family and enjoy their company. When everything is put away we sit around for a while and then we go for a walk. We have found that we can talk just as well and maybe even more while out for a walk than we can sitting in front of the tv.
Yes, we do eat left overs. Since we know how everything was prepared we can confidently enjoy leftovers for the next 3 days just like everyone else.
That is my plan for tomorrow. In order to be successful with your nutrion you need to have one too. Maybe this is the year that you start new healthy traditions. Maybe this is the year that your family sees you as a role model and decides they want to get healthy themselves. Maybe this is the year that you don’t just survive the hloidays but thrive!
Enjoy the day and remeber that it isn’t necessarily about food and overindulgence but a time to give thanks and enjoy the company of those that mean the most to you.
How I am Losing Weight and Sticking to My Diet with Medical Hypnosis
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on June 24th, 2009
You would think that a guy who lost a huge amount of weight in front of America on the most watch reality weight loss TV show along with winning $250,000 would have no trouble keeping the weight off.
I wish that was the case for me, but it wasn’t. My name is Matt Hoover and I am the winner of NBC’s hit show The Biggest Loser. My season aired nearly four years ago.
I kept the weight off easily for about a year and then real life hit. I wasn’t able to work out even a quarter of as much as I did on the show and I let myself believe that I could eat just like everybody else. I was wrong.
The weight slowly crept back on until I reached 255 pounds. I wasn’t alarmed, more like disappointed. I had still kept off 100 pounds since my highest weight, but this was of no consolation to me.
As I wondered why I had done this to myself again I had to look at my options. I could accept it and try to be all right with the amount of weight that I had kept off, or I could take action and lose the weight that I needed to in order to feel good about myself.
I knew I couldn’t commit to 6-8 hours of exercise a day to take it off quickly like I did on the show. This time I was going to commit to doing it right and using the resources available to me.
I began looking at tools that could help me and that is when I met Michael at the Hypnosis Network. He told me about the various programs and offered to send me some CD’s.
When they arrived I put in a CD entitled Enjoying Weight Loss with Dr. Roberta Temes. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I kept an open mind. I listened to the entire session and when it was over I didn’t really feel very different. I was relaxed, but I didn’t physically feel any different. It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed what had gone on. The next day I realized that I wasn’t craving any of the foods that I had been eating for several months that were not necessarily beneficial to me.
I ate when I was hungry but nothing in between. I also began to choose water rather than soda without feeling deprived. I immediately began to form a healthy relationship with food. Something I hadn’t been able to do for years.
I have always been an emotional eater. When things were good or bad, when I was happy or sad, food was my soother. I have a dear friend who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Normally the news alone would have sent me into a tailspin. In fact I did have a 4-pound weight gain after I found out because I went to food. When I realized what I was doing I put my CD with Dr. Roberta in and had a session. I was able to immediately get back on track.
I have lost 30 pounds with the use of my hypnosis cd’s and proper exercise and diet. These sessions are teaching me how to enjoy eating for health.
I listen to the CD’s at least once a month, but usually more. When I feel like I am down or getting into a funk they are the first things I go to. My favorite is the Enjoying Weight Loss program. Most of the time when I am not feeling great it is because I am struggling in this department.
I am currently training for the Ford Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii this October. As I am doing my training I have implemented hypnosis to help me succeed at this as well.
To those of you considering trying hypnosis to help you reach your weight loss or other goals I say, do it. You have nothing to lose and the benefits were amazing for me. Many of us who have struggled with our weight have felt like we have tried everything. Give it a try and I am sure your results will be great.
The great thing about getting the CD’s is that you can use them over and over. Rather than paying for individual sessions at a therapist you get a professional in your ear and head at any time you need them. I have had great success and continue to use the discs as I reevaluate and work to maintain my goals.
These discs have helped me reprogram my thoughts about food and my relationship with food. It has helped my family life because I am feeling better about myself and act accordingly. My wife has noticed the changes and has recommended I do sessions if she has noticed me slipping into a potential funk.
