Posts Tagged Frustration
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!
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 9th, 2010
I had a great workout today. I was feeling pretty good until my trainer said it was time to weigh in. That’s when I remembered my out of control Sunday of eating. I was instantly deflated. I got on the scale and it told me the truth. I was up 3 lbs. Not that big of a deal but I was reminded of how a day of gluttony can affect me for days afterward.
At first I was upset. In my mind, being mad at the scale for a while might actually make a difference. It didn’t. The scale is a piece of equipment that doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care how hard you work or how bad you really want to lose weight. It doesn’t care what TV show you were on or that you are a CEO of a company. It has one job, to tell you the truth.
The truth is, as I said yesterday, I blew it this weekend. Getting mad at the scale and thinking about the food doesn’t change my situation. I’m up, this is where I am and this is where I have to work from. It’s time to move on. I think a lot of people make the same mistake that I do from time to time. I work out hard. I really believe that very few people can keep up with me when I work out.
Unfortunately, working out hard doesn’t give me the ability to eat anything I want. That is where I seem to run into the most problem. I want to be “normal”, work out and then eat whatever I want. As “normal” as I want to be the reality is that I don’t have that luxury. Writing down what I eat and sticking to my calorie range is going to have to me my normal and that is as normal as I am going to get.
The title to this blog is from a song of my favorite artist Jimmy Buffett. In his song he makes the point that once something happens, there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. He’s right! All we can do is keep breathing and work on from where we are after whatever it is that happened has happened.
I ate too much this weekend and now I am going to move on. I won’t be talking about it anymore after this writing and will do my best to ensure that I don’t do it again.
Is there anything that it’s time for you to move on from? As the song goes; Breathe in, breathe out, MOVE ON! Have a great day and be excited to move forward!
See you tomorrow!
Super Bowl Party Let Down…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 8th, 2010
Today the blogoshere is lit up with articles from people that are losing weight who had successful and healthy Super Bowl party experiences. This is not one of those blogs. This morning I woke up with a food hangover that made me feel tired, sluggish, and unmotivated to go to the gym.
My first inhale of air after I woke up sent the smell of cheese burger flavored Doritos to my brain and caused me to want to vomit like a frat kid after a night of Jager-bombs at a house party. Jager-bombs are a particular nasty alcoholic concoction for those of you unfamiliar with drinking lingo. If you are use to eating clean, a bad day of eating can make you feel as bad as any night of drinking.
The day started off pretty good. I prepared myself for the afternoon events by eating normal and talking myself into eating sensibly when I got to the party. I felt like I was ready. I have been working out hard and staying on track in the nutrition part. My mantra was “You’ve been doing great, let’s keep it up today. It’s only a few hour game.”
Before I left I packed my workout gear so that I could go to the gym after the game. I also stopped and picked up a tractor tire to take home and use for workouts. With this in mind I entered the party confident. It only took about two steps inside before all my plans went right out the window.
The spread on that table was looking good. There were some sandwiches that were not a threat as they were relatively healthy. Right next to them were these little smokies wrapped in croissant dough. There was a bag of cheeseburger Doritos and a bowl of other Doritos. Cookies the size of your head were located next to a nice meat and cheese tray.
So what’s a guy to do? I grabbed a sandwich a couple of little hot dogs and a handful of cheeseburger Doritos and walked away. I sat down and ate. I got done and thought “Good job, you didn’t do too bad.” Right after that I thought “Let’s just see what else is up there one more time.” The kiss of death!
I don’t like sweets and I don’t really like Doritos either but for some reason I developed a craving that I wasn’t willing to fight. I ate one of the cookies and it was really good. After that one I saw another one that looked like it might be even better. It was. Needless to say, I picked at food the entire game and felt like I was going to vomit by the time we left.
As we were loading the boys in the car I told Suzy that I would just work out at home. We both knew better and decided I better just get to the gym. The thing is that I was dead tired. I had entered a food coma and wanted to go to sleep. I drove to the gym thinking about what an idiot I had just been. Now I was going to pay for it.
I hopped on a bike and rode for an hour. It wasn’t an enjoyable workout and I felt like all that food could be out of my mouth and onto the floor at any time. I made it through and went home. I sat there watching television like a zombie for a while and then went to bed frustrated.
I woke up this morning and still felt bad but knew I needed to get over it and go back to work. Even though I blew it at the party, I still found some redemption in the fact that I went and worked out even though I didn’t want to. This morning as frustrated as I was I got right back on schedule.
The moral of this story. We all blow it from time to time. The important thing is not to dwell on it and get right back on track. Hey, when I do it I do it big. The difference now is that I don’t beat myself up for days or weeks. I get back to work and do my best to learn from my mistake. Now back to work!
See you tomorrow!
