Posts Tagged losing weight
Boys Week Day 4…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 25th, 2010
So I take off for the gym this morning and I was so proud. I packed up the diaper bag with a couple bottles and some extra clothes and undies for Rex. Got the boys loaded up and off we went.
I get to the gym and go to grab the bag. It’s not there! Dang it! I figured I’d only be about an hour so we would probably be all right. My workout partner Kevin Theis (season 3 of BL) was there right on time.
Our trainer told us that the other guys we workout with couldn’t go till eleven. Kevin had to leave by then so he and I did our own workout. As we were getting ready to go my other partners came up and started razzing me a little.
Long story short, I decided to go again. After another circuit workout we decided to wrestle. After my first go I heard my name called on the intercom to report to childcare. ”Oh great, the boys have had enough.” I thought. Turns out the boys were fine and having fun. The problem was that the childcare was closing until 4.
I grabbed Rex, put Jax in the stroller and ran up to wrestle my next go. I think the boys liked watching daddy wrestle. I know Rex did. He was mad that we didn’t bring his workout gear and shoes. Before we left we had to do Rex’s “push-ups”.
We got home and I put the boys down for a nap. While they were out I cleaned the house and then Gramma GiGi and Auntie came and got the boys so I could have a break. I thought I would just lay down and watch some TV. It’s weird, but it was almost too quiet.
I got up and went to our room and organized all the drawers. Seriously, socks, underwear,jeans, tshirts, both mine and Suzy. By the time it was done it was time to go workout again.
The thing I can’t get over is how quickly time goes. My wife makes everything look easy. It’s not! I will definitely think twice before I decide to take off for a training camp or something like that next time. I can’t wait till Suzy gets home but this time with the boys has taught me a lot.
I have definitely grown this week and it is only going to help me be a better dad and husband. It’s been tough but it’s been good and it is only temporary thankfully.
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!
It’s Nothing Personal….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 4th, 2010
Yesterday I wrote something that really got me thinking. The question was: What are you suppose do when the person you love doesn’t love themselves? Today I am going to try and give a reasonable answer to this question. More specifically, I am going to answer a question that I have received at every speaking engagement I have done over the past four years. How do I get my spouse to workout and make changes?
Let me start by saying this. You can’t! The cold hard truth is that the only one capable of changing ourselves is us. We can nag and push and berate, but what it all boils down to is that none of that is going to make a peson take action. When I was at my heaviest weight and lowest in life, there was nothing anyone could say to motivate me. My friends and family knew that I had the ability to do so much more but I wasn’t willing to do what they new I could.
People called me names and poked fun thinking that maybe that would do it. My mom would talk to me about my drinking and let me know she was concerned. My brother, who lost his weight as I was gaining mine would offer encouragement in his brotherly way. I heard them but I didn’t listen.
It wasn’t until I was laying on the couch all alone one night watching The Biggest Loser that I began to take action to change. What was my motivation? It was the little bit of pride that I had left inside me. “I wrestled at The University of Iowa. I have carried people on my back up the stairs of Carver Hawkeye Arena. I should be on that show. I would win.”
It was after saying those exact words that I rolled off the couch and started the process of applying to be on the show. Even at my worst I had some pride left in me. We all do. Unfortunatley, some of us use that pride in the wrong way by saying we don’t need to change. We are too prideful to realize that we are hurting ourselves.
That moment of having enough good pride to take action and yet being able to swallow the bad pride changed me for ever. The thing is that I had to do it.
So what do you do when the person you care about doesn’t want to make changes that will benefit them? First, we need to look at ourselves before we even begin to open our mouths. You can not ask someone to do something that you aren’t first willing to do yourself. If I am overweight, how can I ask the person I care about to lose weight while I sit on the couch?
After that self examination, proceed with caution. Today we will use weight loss for an example. Start by getting more active yourself and encouraging the person you want to include to come along. Maybe it’s just a short walk down the block at first. Don’t take them out and beat the snot out of them to prove to them just how out of shape they are.
Many wives ask me how to get their husband to eat better. Not to sound old fashioned, although that is exactly what happens when someone says something like that, but start cooking healthier food. So many people who are trying to get healthy cook one way for themselves and another for the others in the house. Stop doing that.
When someone tells me that the others in the house won’t eat the way they do, I say let them go hungry. Remember earlier when I said take care of yourself first? This is a prime example. If you start preparing healthy meals other members in your house have two options. Eat it or go hungry. Right here is where I could go off on a tangent about how we have become a nation of people pleasers but I won’t.
It is not cruel to ask members of your own household to eat healthy. In fact, you are doing them a favor! Make no mistake, it may take some time to unlearn old habits and embrace or tolerate the new ones so give it some time. If your family is use to eating McDonald’s every night don’t expect them to jump for joy when you start off a meal with a salad. Stay with it and don’t give in. We will continue this discussion tomorrow.
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!
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.
