Posts Tagged Goals
Day 3 Recap from Biggest Loser Resort….Time to “Change My Normal”
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on June 8th, 2011
It’s Not Starting Over, It’s Starting….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on December 1st, 2010
One of the biggest problems I use to have was saying “Tomorrow I am going to get started again.” I would tell myself this over and over until tomorrow became next week, next week became next month, and next month became next year. I sat year after year spinning my wheels thinking “Tomorrow’s the day.”
One of the problems with doing this is that we start to lose faith in our ability to accomplish things. We begin by thinking about how we are letting others down. We see it in their eyes and in their actions that they just don’t believe the words that are coming out of our mouths. In a way we make it about someone else. “I could do it, but no one thinks I can do it.”
Who cares what others think? It’s not their journey and it’s not their responsibility to be our cheerleader. If you have had a tendancy to always wait till tomorrow, how about taking action today? How about not worrying about what you think EVERYONE else is thinking and act on your own behalf.
The great thing about our life is that each day we choose how we are going to live it, regardless of circumstances. We choose whether or not we are going to exercise and eat healthy or not. We choose to do the best we can with where we are.
I want to encourage everyone to not wait until tomorrow or the new year to get started on making your life the way you want it to be. Instead of starting tomorrow and having that one “last supper” or binge, get going today and see what can happen.
It’s not about starting over, it is about starting to be consistent and focusing in on what’s important.
Remember, it’s not about starting over, it’s about starting and doing the best you can along the way.
Getting a Jumpstart on New Years Resolutions….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on November 29th, 2010
I can’t believe that it is only 2 days away from December. It seems like time has been moving faster and faster. Today I am going to talk about New Years Resolutions. Let’s face it, every year we hear advice about how to make them and how to achieve them.
If it is so easy, why do many of us have to make the same on year after year? It’s because resolutions are simply good ideas. There is a big difference between ideas and goals. Ideas are something that we would like to do. Goals are something that we actively pursue in order to achieve.
Ideas are things that we work toward when it is convienent and we “have time”. Goals have structured plans that we MAKE time for. Of course the most famous New Years resolution of all is the resolution to “seriously lose weight and get healthy this year.”
It’s a great concept, but it is too vague. By saying “I’m going to lose weight”, we give ourselves too much lienency. By that statement, if we lose 1 pound we have met our resolution. This year, I want to challenge you to make specific goals. Instead of saying “I’m going to lose weight”, set a specific goal. For instance, let’s say today you weigh 26o pounds. A specific goal would be: I will weigh 210 pounds on September 11, 2011.
It’s a simple statement but notice what it does. It gives you an end date and a specific number to hit. We aren’t done yet. After clarifying our specific goal we need to look at what it’s going to take to reach that goal. If you were to start on your goal today, you would have 42 weeks to achieve it. That means you would need to lose 1.2 pounds a week for the next 42 weeks.
That is very doable. What’s it going to take to hit that weekly number? How much are you going to workout? What are you going to eat? What numbers along the way are you going to use to celebrate? Will you celebrate every 5, 10, 15 pounds? What is your reward going to be? (Not going out to eat!) Who is your support system going to consist of? What are your breakthrough goals going to be? What are you going to do when you get there? How are you going to maintain? Is this a lifestyle change or are you doing this for a specific event? What are you going to do when you face challenges? How will you overcome those challenges?
I could go on and on but I hope you get my point. There is a big difference between setting goals and having a plan on how to achieve them.
Let’s take a different approach to New Years Resolutions this year. Instead of waiting until the new year, how about starting now? Instead of making resolutions, lets make goals. Remember ideas are things we work on when it’s convenient. Goals are things we work on everyday whether it is convenient or not.
Have a great day
Are You a Do-er or a Gonna Do-er?
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 5th, 2010
Yesterday I talked a little about how we can’t change others, only ourselves. I want to talk about how our actions speak louder than words. By changing ourselves we can encourage those around us to make changes without saying a word. I am going to share how I use to be a “gonna do” person instead of a “do” person.
For a lot of years when I was struggling I would tell people about what I was going to do. I was going to lose weight, I was going to quit drinking so much, I was going to go back to school. Let’s just say I was going to do a lot of things.
Nearly every week I was gonna start a diet. I was a lot like people you have seen or maybe even yourself. On Monday I would show up to work with my water and a salad for lunch. On Tuesday I would show up with a salad, a sandwich, and a water. On Wednesday I would have a sandwich and a pop. On Thursday a sandwich, a pop, and a bag of chips. On Friday I was like “Forget it, let’s just go out for lunch. I did pretty good this week.” This pattern would repeat itself pretty regularly.
The other thing I was always gonna do was cut back on the drinking. On Saturdays when I was good and drunk I would tell my friends that “After tonight, I’m done.” They would laugh a little and then say “OK Hoover, whatever you say.” I use to get upset and think to myself “Why don’t they beleive me? They should be encouraging me!” Again, I said this on a regular basis but never got around to actually doing it.
It never dawned on me that the reason people didn’t get excited for me is because they were constantly hearing me say things and never doing anyting. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to see me do things they just knew from my past that I probably wasn’t going to follow through. It wasn’t meaness, it was past experiences.
I don’t think I am much different from a lot of people in wanting praise for the things I want to do and not wanting constructive criticism for the things I say I am going to do and then don’t. We all want to look good in others eyes and not look like a failure. Unfortunately, when we don’t follow through we start to talk about what we are going to do next as though to somehow make up for what we didn’t do.
It’s a vicious cycle and it leads nowhere. We need to start small with the changes and then check them off as we go. More importantly, we need to follow through. It’s easy to set big goals and talk about all of the great things we want to do. It can be difficult to actually do them.
I rarely tell people all of the things I am going to do now. I just do them and let people see the results. One reason is that a lot of the things that I tend to do seem downright insane to others. For example, competing in the Ford Ironman World Championships having never done more than a sprint triathlon before. The other reason is that I have learned that my actions speak louder than my words.
In the words of the great Nike slogan, Just Do It! That being said, when we begin to take action more than likely those around us will too. If you want to encourage someone close to you to lose weight, lose weight yourself first. If you want to get a better job, start looking and preparing yourself. We can’t just sit around and wait for things to happen for us. We have to be do-ers instead of gonna do-ers! Have an awesome weekend and go do something!
See you Monday!
Surprise Surprise….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 2nd, 2010
Rex was quite a surprise for us. As a good friend of mine likes to say,I couldn’t have been more surprised if I woke up with my head stapled to the carpet, when I found out Suzy was pregnant again. Jax, our second son, was definitely not on our schedule.
It was tough on Suzy because she was only a few pounds away from her goal weight again when we found out Jax was on his way. I was doing well too. This time we pretty much just let loose. We were dealing with a 5 month old and we just gave in. Once again Suzy and I packed on the weight together.
The odd thing is that since we were doing it together it wasn’t so bad in our minds. After all, I was just trying to make my wife happy. I guess that is one of the things about having been on the show together. I think it kind of gave us a false confidence. “We may have gained weight, but we can lose it when we want.” It was true that we could lose it when we wanted, but it was going to take a lot longer than when we were living on the ranch.
I talk all the time about how people in the real world shouldn’t expect to see double digit weight loss numbers every week like they see on the show. I know from experience that it takes hours of activity and pretty excessive calorie restriction to get those numbers. Knowing all this, in the back of my mind I thought I should still be able to do that.
I can’t. Not only can I not lose double digits each week, I don’t want to. I don’t want to live on 1200 calories a day the rest of my life. I like to eat food and enjoy it. I don’t want to feel guilty every time I eat something I’m “not suppose to”. I want to be able to go out to eat with my wife and have some bread. I want to enjoy living a healthy life.
After having our second son, Suzy and I decided to make it our goal to be a healthy family. Not a family on a diet with an exercise obsession, but a healthy family. We decided that we would eat healthy as a family and be active as a family. This meant taking the boys with us when we went for walks. It meant working our schedules out so that each of us could get our own workouts in. It meant making healthy meals and staying away from the fast food joints.
Suzy made all of the boys’ baby food. We never bought a jar of baby food from the store. Doing this made us more aware of how we were eating as well. Just before Jax was born we went for a hike. On the way down from the mountains Suzy wanted to stop and get some ice cream at Dairy Queen. Well, I didn’t want her to have to eat ice cream alone so I got some as well.
About 2 minutes after we got our ice cream Rex started squaking in the back seat. He wanted some ice cream. Suzy said “No Rex, this isn’t for little boys.” After she said that we both looked at each other. We couldn’t tell our kids not to do things if we weren’t willing to not do them ourselves. We tossed the ice cream.
We knew that Rex was getting old enough to see what we were doing. We couldn’t fake it anymore. This crazy life of ours has just gotten crazier as the boys get older but we are doing our best to change our family’s legacy when it comes to health.
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!
Remember That Post About Being Consistent?
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 16th, 2010
It’s 2am. I woke up feeling like I had forgotten to do something. As I lay there for a minute I realized what it was. It was write on my blog.
Here I had talked about being consistent consistently and how in the past I had consistently been consistent for about a week and then let it slip. I had also mentioned how inconsistency was some peoples only form of consistency.
Well, as I am working on being more consistent, I figured the only logical thing to do was haul my butt out of bed and write.
So, here I am at 2am continuing to work at becoming consistent. I hope this counts towards my efforts at doing so.
Good Night!
The Key to Consistency is Being Consistent!
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 12th, 2010
As we proceed deeper into the new year at what seems to be an incredible rate of speed, I am forced to come to some self realization.
When the new year started I decided that I was going to be more consistent with things in my life. This blog, for example, is something I wanted to be more consistent about. Looking back over the past year of my pieces showed me that I was rather sporadic. I’d have a week of blogs then some time off, then another week and some time off.
What became painfully obvious to me was that doing something consistently for a week does not make one consistent. In other words, to be consistent we need to do things consistently week after week.
Only by being consistently consistent can we consistently be consistent! Alright, now I even feel like I have taken this a little too far. But maybe I haven’t. One of the other things that I have come to see is that, unfortunately, being inconsistent can be some people’s only form of consistency.
Whether we choose to accept it or not, we are all either consistently consistent OR consistently inconsistent. I really don’t see any middle ground.
I am going to come clean right now. Last year I was more inconsistent than consistent. I found myself focusing in on some very direct goals while losing site of others. By doing this I was able to have some amazing experience but I missed out on some opportunities as well.
Had I been consistent, who is to say what other things may have arisen. Here is the thing about inconsistency. When we are inconsistent we can never fully realize our potential. The only way to maximize our potential and increase opportunities to reach that potential is by becoming and being consistent.
This year I am going to be consistently consistent with my faith, my family, my exercise, my nutrition, my business, my blogging, well with everything that I set inside my heart and mind to acheive.
This is going to be an awesome year. And if nothing else, a consistent one!
Sometimes We Learn Without Even Knowing It..
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 11th, 2010
Today I was driving home from taking my sons to swim lessons. I was thinking about how difficult it must be for the instructor to teach a 2yr old and a 1yr old the basics of swimming.
What looked like complete chaos to me, was a calculated exercise for the swimming instructor. In fact, as I watched, I half wondered what exactly we are getting for the amount of money we are paying.
The class is 30 minutes long and that is it. The boys show up, they splash around while the instructor repeats catchy phrases and they leave. They do this twice a week.
What I realized is that the lessons the boys learned in that seemingly chaotic 30 minutes last much longer than the time they are in the water. My 2 yr old Rex was repeating: zip, tickle the arms, blast off, the whole way home.
He was putting in to practice what he had learned, and what looked like a frolic in the pool that I was paying good money for, suddenly made sense.
The moral of the story is this. A good teacher can be teaching us a lesson without us even really knowing it. Think about that the next time you are bored to death or can’t see the point in listening to someone you are suppose to be learning from.
