Posts Tagged self talk
What I See When I Look In The Mirror…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 3rd, 2010
There is a strange phenomenon that occurs when you lose weight with someone close to you. When Suzy and I were on the show neither of us really noticed the changes that were happening physically. It seems like when we see a person everyday we are less likely to notice the changes in appearance that are taking place.
It seems like the last person to see the change in us when we lose weight is us. When I got home from the ranch everyone was telling me how good I looked but when I saw myself in the mirror I saw the old me. In the same way that we may not notice a weight loss in a person close to us, the opposite is also true. It may not be immediately obvious when the same person we saw lose the weight starts to gain it back.
After Jax was born Suzy said she was going to take six weeks and then get back to working out. At the six week mark she started working out again. By this time I had gotten pretty lazy. Suzy would ask if I wanted to go for a walk and I would go begrudgingly. When I saw Suzy working out everyday, I didn’t see her as someone who needed to lose weight. I saw her as someone who was suggesting that I needed to lose weight.
There hasn’t been a day that has gone by that I haven’t thought my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. When she said she was unhappy with her weight I couldn’t figure it out. I seriously thought she was crazy. That is when I realized that I was being an enabler. Not just for my wife, but for myself as well.
By not being supportive of her feelings I was basically telling her that her feelings about herself weren’t valid. By telling her she didn’t have to work out I was giving myself permission to not work out as well. Although I was trying to show her that I loved her “just they way she is” I was doing more harm than good. Of course we love the ones closest to us just the way they are. What are you suppose to do when you love them but they don’t necessarily love themselves?
I’m not saying Suzy didn’t love herself, she didn’t love the way she looked. Not supporting her was like nonverbally saying everyday “It’s fine with me if you aren’t happy just don’t bother me with it because I think you look just fine.” Unfortunately that type thinking was more of a reflection upon myself than it was on my wife.
If I could just get Suzy to be happy with not working out and just carrying some extra weight, maybe I could do the same. It is a little sad but a lot of times in relationships if one person decides they need to make a change the other person takes it personal. As if them wanting to improve themselves somehow means that we are lacking.
For me it was “If Suzy wants to lose weight, she must really mean that she wants me to lose weight.” Oh whoas me! How could she be so selfish as to want something better for herself. There must be something wrong with me. Suzy wanted to be healthy and be an example for our kids like we had talked about since before they were born. I wanted to somehow be healthy but not have to put so much effort into it.
In 14 months my wife had 2 babies and I was the one feeling sorry for myself when I looked in the mirror. Selfishness not only sabatoges the ones we love but ourselves as well. When I finally took a good long look in the mirror I realized that I did in fact need to make some changes. Changes in the way I really saw myself, not how I thought others saw me or how my wife saw me but in the person I saw staring back at me in that mirror everyday.
See you tomorrow!
Seeds of Insecurity…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 28th, 2010
I have decided that it is redundant to keep making the title of my blogs Life After Biggest Loser since everything I write about is my life after the show. After reading my blog a couple times yesterday I decided that I want to talk more about what I am going to call “Fat Person in a Skinny Body Syndrome” or FPSBS for the purposes of my blog.
As most of you know, I am not a doctor or psychologist so the things I am talking about are my own experiences. When you have been a contestant on a show like The Biggest Loser, people remember you one of two ways when it comes to physical appearance. What you looked like before the show or what you looked like at the finale.
When people see you in person who remember you from when you started the show they are very complimentary. “Wow, you have done a great job!” Those who remember you from the finale say “Wow, you have put back quite a bit of weight on!” They are both right.
If I had lost a bunch of weight in the privacy of my own home and people just learned through conversation that I once weighed over 350 pounds they would be like “Wow, that’s great!” Since I chose to do it on national television it’s a little different. The day I signed the contract to be on the show I signed up to be publicly judged by strangers.
Today I want to talk about how words from strangers and even people we know can take root in our lives and sometimes even cause us to self destruct.
Believe it or not, spring is just around the corner. This spring, farmers will start planting seeds in their fields. They will drop them in the ground and then cover them up with dirt. Even though we can’t see it underground, that seed is sprouting and developing a root system for whatever type of plant it is to become. As the seed continues to sprout the roots will take hold and become the support system for the plant as it begins to push it’s way through the dirt.
That little seed, once planted continues to work it’s way to the surface even though we can’t see it. “Great Matt, thanks for the farming lesson, what’s the point?” Here you go. Let’s imagine the words other people say to us are like that seed. They may something mean or discouraging and at the time we think nothing of it and just brush it off. We may even think to ourselves “What a jerk.” We bury it.
Maybe after a few hours we are sitting around and the words that person said come back into our mind. This time rather than dismissing the words we begin to dwell on them a little bit. If those words were seeds, we have just planted them in our mind. They have begun to take root if you will. Now is when the words that have taken root can grow in one of two ways. We can use them to fuel us to become better or we can begin to believe them and let those words bring us down.
I once had a lady at an event I was speaking at only a couple weeks after the finale, a time when I actually felt the best about my appearance, say I better watch it because I had already gained weight. A couple of weeks later she was kind enough to email me and tell me that I better get honest with myself because I was probably gain all my weight back.
At first I dismissed her as the ignorant person she was, but then I found myself becoming more and more critical of myself. Guess what I did. I cultivated those words into thoughts and actions that became detrimental to myself. I let a perfect stranger plant the seeds of doubt in my mind and rather than turning it into a positive began to feel guilty.
Thoughts like “She’s probably right”, “I’ll show her, I’m going to go eat whatever I want”, and “That’s what I’ve done before” consumed me. A perfect stranger! I started to punish myself and set myself up for failure because of words a stranger said to me took root. It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it!
As ridiculous as it is when you read what I just wrote, how many of us have done the exact same thing? If we don’t learn to appreaciate ourselves and our new body, it can be really easy for those seeds of insecurity to take root and undo all of the hard work that we have just done. A fat person in a skinny body is much more likely to go back to being a fat person in a fat body if they don’t plant new seeds and see themselves as the new person that they have become.
See you tomorrow!
