Posts Tagged diet
Day 3 At Fitness Ridge…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on June 16th, 2010
Have you ever taken a long trip in the car to a vacation destination? Think about it. When it’s time to leave you are so excited to be going. When you are about half way you start to think “We should have flown”, “Why are we still driving?”, “When are we going to be there?” Sound familiar?
I started a trip on Monday here at Fitness Ridge. On Monday I was so excited. On Tuesday I was sore but still excited to be here. Today I was exhausted. I didn’t want to get up for the 6 am hike, I really wanted to go get a big huge breakfast. I didn’t want to work out as hard as I knew I could.
The good news is that I did get up, I didn’t go out to eat, and I did work out as hard as I could. The question is why do we start out so fast on a journey only to lose momentum. I believe it’s because as good as our intentions may be, often we will look back at past experiences and draw upon those as opposed to focusing on the experience that we are currently having.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have always been a fast starter only to lose a little focus on the way to my destination. Instead of pushing through, sometimes I will decide to start over. This cycle repeats itself and it seems that I am not making any progress and eventually come up with a reason to focus on something else.
If you haven’t noticed, my hikes this week are my reflection times. Today I realized that it’s not enough to start a journey, we need to finish it. Sure it would have been easy to take some time off, come up with an excuse why I needed a break, but the reality is that I didn’t and don’t need a break.
Today was Wednesday, fittingly refered to as hump day. We have to be willing to get over that hump in order to move forward toward our destination. Even though we may not feel like it, we have to press on. If we continue to give up and start over every time we face difficulties we will never get anywhere, much less the place we really want to be.
To sum it up, today was a day to look at today, not tomorrow or a month from now but right here in the present. I had to decide not to give up and start over another day. I had to push through today in order to get tomorrow and once again transform my life in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.
We will never know what we are capable of if we give up before we give ourselves a chance. Press on!
See you tomorrow!
Biggest Loser Fitness Ridge…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on June 13th, 2010
Tonight I arrived at the Biggest Loser Fitness Ridge Resort in Utah. As soon as I arrived I was taken to be measured, weighed, and have my picture taken. After that I was suppose to go to supper. I went out to my car and had a mini panic attack. I felt like the new kid in school. A lot of the people had been here a while and already knew each other. I was intimidated. I was more nervous tonight than when I went on The Biggest Loser.
I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I am not where I want to be physically. I knew people would know me, and I let my thoughts take over. “What would they think of me?” “Are they going to wonder why I am not the size I was when I left the show?”
These thoughts and more were paralyzing me. The thing is, is that I was doing it to myself. I walked in and found a place to sit. Everyone introduced themselves. All of the people seemed really nice. Some gave advice, some told stories, all are here to change their lives.
When it got to me, I took the microphone and stumbled through an introduction. I get paid to travel the country and speak. I’ve had audiences of over 2000 people and tonight I couldn’t talk. I was more nervous than when I got to the ranch to be on national television.
When it was all over I headed back to the condo I will be living in for the next two weeks. It can be lonely when you are all by yourself and I noticed the loneliness immediately. I am use to being around my wife and two little spark plug boys.
It’s going to be interesting, but as I said earlier this week; sometimes the best thing you can do to take care of your family is take care of yourself.
I am going to bust during my time here and will keep you all updated along the way. Check back for daily wrap-ups as well as video of my time here.
It’s time to stop being scared and go to work!
Still On Track….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 15th, 2010
I want to thank my readers who asked if I was still on track with my blog and workouts. I am! There was a glitch on my site and my new posts were not appearing on the home page. I believe it is taken care of now. To all of you who sent me messages asking how things were going, thank you. If you hadn’t asked I probably wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. The post are now up so I hope you will go back and read them.
I had an amazing talk with a good friend of mine last week. We were talking about getting and staying on track and he said something that really resonated with me and I think it will be beneficial for all of you as well, regardless of where you are at in your life right now.
I was telling him how in the past I have always felt like things need to be difficult for me in order to feel like I am accomplishing anything. When I was losing weight I felt like it needed to be hard. When it came to finances I felt like even though I have plenty of money I still feel like I should be struggling for some reason. In my speaking career I have felt like there should be times where I don’t have a lot of events booked so that I work harder.
Turns out I can be an idiot. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle. More times than not we make it a struggle so that we have an excuse in case things don’t work out like we plan. If we make losing weight hard we have a reason to give up. “It was just too hard.” “There must be something wrong with my metabolism.” “I don’t know what’s going on with my weight.” We build excuses for ourselves based on not only our own experience but the experiences of others as well.
My friend listened intently and then said this. “I don’t care.” I was a little taken aback. How could he not care after I had just spilled my guts to him. The answer is simple. It doesn’t matter what you’ve always done, what matters is what you are doing now. Things don’t have to be hard just because that’s the way it’s always been.
He then took a sheet a paper and drew a line on it. He pointed to the left side of the line and said that the left side reprresented the past. He didn’t care that I had won The Biggest Loser. He didn’t care that my parents had gotten a divorce or that I didn’t do as well in school as I should have. He didn’t care anything about those things and neither should I. What happened in the past doesn’t have to affect us today. If I am going to be truly successful I need to draw the line and move forward.
I have talked for hours about the importance of not reliving the past. For some reason the first place I go when things get tough is straight to my past experiences. Not the good ones that show I am capable overcoming, but the bad experiences that lead me to think “See, this is what you do all the time. Now you have done it all over again.”
It’s time to draw that line. I have had tough times in the past but I have also had good ones. Times that showed me that I am tough and that I am an overcomer. For all the bad times there were a lot more good ones. The good ones are the ones we need to draw strength from. The bad experiences are like an anchor that is weighing us down. Until we pull that anchor up we can’t move to a better place.
I hope you will join me in drawing that line and striving to not cross back over. Let’s draw from the positive things in our life and stop setting ourselves up for defeat by reliving and speaking the negatives. We have too much life to live to allow ourselves to be weighed down with those negative anchors.
DRAW THE LINE!
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!
Life After The Biggest Loser…. Part 4
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 27th, 2010
“You are the Biggest Loser!” The cannon goes off and the confetti flies. I couldn’t hear, I was ecstatic. I remember being pulled from interview to interview and then having a few minutes before I was taken off in a car and put on a red-eye flight to New York.
I didn’t sleep on that flight. I had never been to New York and I had just accomplished one of the biggest goals I had had in years and was thinking about what I was going to eat the next day. As you may remeber, I mentioned that I was a fish out of water when I got to LA. I had no idea what was going on and now I was going to go to NY to be on about every major talk show on television. Now I was about to find out how out of the water I was.
My plane landed at around 5 am and as soon as I got in the car I had an interview with my local radio station back in Iowa. I got to be close friends with the morning radio show personalities Schulte and Swann since they had been having me in each Wednesday to do a recap of the show. Next stop was Regis and Kelly.
I had no clue what was going on. They held me in a little room and when it was my time I went out to do the interview. I don’t think either one of them had ever seen the show and had no idea who I was or why I was on their show. It was on their show that I learned you can’t swear on TV. I said “fat a##” They looked at me like I had just dropped the F bomb. I didn’t do that anymore.
I spent the rest of the day going from show to show and magazine photo shoot to photo shoot. I got a call from my state senator and other people I had never met. The weirdest thing was when I had my first paparazzi photo taken. I don’t think they knew who I was either. They just saw me coming out of one of the shows through a private entrance and getting into a limo so I must have been phot worthy. I was on the same press tour as Naomi Watts so they were probably waiting for her. Imagine their dissapointment when I came walking out!
I was in NY for a couple days before it was back to LA to do the same thing on a different side of the country. I look at pictures today from some of those shoots and I wonder what the heck I was thinking. I say that because a couple days after the finale I was back up to 200 lbs. I felt huge. I wasn’t. In my mind since I wasn’t 182, a weight I don’t want to nor will I ever be again, that I was a fat pig again.
I was a mental mess. I had been so focused on winning and now that I had done it, I had no idea what I was going to do. Every year I hear contestants say “I’m never going to go back to that again.” I said it myself. The thing for me was that I had lost weight so fast that my mind didn’t have time to catch up with my body. I was a fat guy in a skinny body.
When I saw pictures I would get all uptight. “Look at my chin, am I hanging over my jeans?” I was so critical of myself. I look at those pics today and I want to smack myself. I looked great but I never gave myself credit. I was hyper-critical of myself and was already beginning to set myself up to gain weight again.
I really was a fat guy in a skinny body.
See you tomorrow!
Life After The Biggest Loser…. Part 2
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 22nd, 2010
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!
Here come the Holidays!
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on November 23rd, 2009
I can’t beleive it’s Thanksgiving already. Thanksgiving seems to be the kick-off for the holidays. For many the word holidays conjures up the thoughts of multiple parties, time with friends and family, or a time to be a little lax on their exercise. After all, New Years will be here soon and you can set the same resolution you have the last however many years, to get healthier and fitter.
Here is the thing. For many the holidays are really only 2 days, Thanksgiving and Christmas, yet many of us turn December into a month long celebration. We take the holiDAYs and turn it into holiWEEKs. And by the end of the month many have packed on an the pounds. Stats show that average gain in the month of December is 3-7 pounds.
Why do some people pack on the pounds while others go through the holidays unscathed? It really is pretty simple. It comes down to planning and common sense. Fit people tend to grasp the idea that the holidays are a time to spend with your family and celebrate your beliefs, not take a whole month off from working out and over-indulging.
Think about how many parties that you will attend over the next month, not even including Thanksgiving and Christmas. My guess is that most of us will attend at least two many of us anywhere from 4-6. Attending that many get togethers leads to ample opportunities to over do it.
I am not saying don’t leave the house this festive season, I am saying use your head. Plan Ahead! My gym is open on Thanksgiving morning. Guess where I will be before I sit down to enjoy some turkey? The gym!
By getting a workout in I feel more in control at the table. I know that this is simply another meal and that the real joy of the day comes from spending it with people you care about. Last year Suzy and I began hosting Thanksgiving at our house. We had a blast but more importantly, we knew how everything was prepared and made dishes that we could enjoy and that others would enjoy as well. No one complained about having a meal prepared in a healthier way and it tasted great despite missing pounds of butter.
Tomorrow I will have Suzy join me and we are going to share some ideas about how you can make Thanksgiving enjoyable while still making progress toward your healthy lifestyle. The rest of this month I will be writing about not just surviving the holidays but thriving during this month and how we are going to all get a jumpstart on those who are waiting for the new year to begin their changes.
This is an exciting time of the year for many reasons, lets get excited about being fit too!
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.
Building Your Team
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on June 18th, 2009
After my swim workout this morning I was driving home and had some time to do some thinking. Of course I was thinking about all of the training I have been doing and all of the training that still lies ahead.
When I agreed to participate in this years Ford Ironman World Championships I knew it was going to be a lot of work. When I decided to do it I knew I was going to need some help in order to reach my goal of finishing this grueling day.
The only thing I knew about triathlons in general was that you swam, ran, and biked. I have been doing all of those things seprately for most of my life. How hard can it be? Individually not that hard. But when you combine the three and add some significant distance it can become pretty tough.
This brought me around to the world of diet and exercise. I’m sure I’m correct in assuming that most of us have been eating our entire lives. I’m also pretty sure that nearly all of us have exercised at one time in our lives as well.
The problem comes not in eating or exercising individually, but in doing them both properly. Many times we think that we can get away with one or the other when in reality in order to really be healthy we need to combine both exercise and nutrition.
As I have been training for the Ironman I have stopped losing weight. I am working out like I did when I was on The Biggest Loser and burning tons of calories. The problem is that I am also consuming a lot of calories to keep my energy up for my workouts.
I have always been on a diet. Even in wrestling I learned how to train and compete on very few calories. I can’t get away with that anymore. To complete the distances that I am training for, my body needs calories for energy. I have to learn how to eat properly.
So back to the idea of learning how to do the proper combination of exercise and nutrition. Having come to the conclusion that I have been going about it all wrong, I have built myself a team.
I want to share the members of team with you so that you too can see how important it is to have a support system. I know I could finish the Ironman training by myself. The thing is that I don’t wan to just finish, I want to finish the best that I can.
In order to do this I had to swallow my pride and accept the fact that I need help. Many times in our lives we think that the only way to achieve something is to figure out how to do it on our own. The truth is that there are a lot of resources out there that can help us reach our goals in a much more efficient fasion.
Here is a short list of my team. I have a personal triathlon coach. I have a team triathlon coach. I have a nutritionist. I have a mind coach through The Hypnosis Network CD’s. I have strength coach, and I have a massage therapist.
I have all of these people and more helping me to reach my goal. As I said, I could finish my race without their help, but having this team is going to help me be smarter, more efficcient, and better trained than if I was attempting to do this all on my own.
Who could you use on your team? Is it time to stop spinning your wheels and seek out those who can help you become more efficient at attaining your goals? Of course we can do it on our own, but why not build your team and see if you can do it better?
