Posts Tagged weight loss
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!
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!
Life After The Biggest Loser…. Part 3
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 26th, 2010
I knew I had changed a lot when I was on the ranch. It was easy to see the physical changes. What I didn’t see is how much I had changed internally. I arrived home to the fanfare of a small town 4th of July. Many of my friends and family were there as well as my favorite local band The Cedar Island Band. It was an exciting time. Most people hadn’t seen me thin in years and some had never even know me as a thin person.
I was a pretty good mess in the head when I got home. I was happy to see everyone but I was also scared. Not scared of them, but scared of how they would react to the new me. Almost everyone was really great. Those who weren’t, I let go of. Probably the toughest thing to readjust to was going out in public again.
Keep in mind, this was right after I had come home from the ranch so people didn’t know who I was yet. The show hadn’t aired yet so people didn’t know that I was “that guy from that show”. My problem was just being able to interact with others. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to anyone but the other contestants on the ranch and it kind of turned me into an introvert.
It was easy on the ranch because that is just what I did. I worked out. When I got home I was still competing and the only thing I had on my brain was winning. Even though nobody knew who I was I felt like people were always looking at me and talking about me. It kind of drove me nuts. Looking back I’m sure they weren’t. To everybody else I looked like a normal guy out and about.
I had a few freak outs. I knew that everything I did had potential repercussions on my outcome on the show. I was crazy about how food was prepared and how much of it there was. If vegetables looked to have any type of oil I would send them back. If I ordered a burger and it came out with fries or a bun I would send it back. Needless to say, I didn’t go out very much.
My routine was exactly that, a routine. I did the same thing every day. I got up in the morning and had a bowl of Kashi GoLean with yogurt instead of milk. I rode my bicycle to work 17 miles each way. At lunch I ate a bag of lettuce shreds with deli meat cut up into it and a couple tbs of Galileaos dressing. After work I went to wrestling practice. For supper I had 8 oz of some lean meat and then before bed I did an hour of cardio.
On Sundays I went to Dairy Queen and had a Banana Cream Pie Blizzard with Reeces Peanut Butter Cups in it. I think my Blizzard was the thing that kept me sane. It gave me something to look forward to. I think I was able to keep this routine because I was still playing the game and had a chance to win the money.
I had blinders on the entire time I was at home. I didn’t do well with any deviation from my routine. I am glad that I was able to do that but it has also been one of my biggest struggles since. I am an all or nothing person. I am 100 % on track or I’m all the way off. $250,000 is a pretty good incentive to stay on track. It can also get just about anybody to do just about anything for a period of time.
The hardest part for me after the finale was finding that balance and finding a way to be motivated by something besides the game of The Biggest Loser. I will get more into this on another day.
To put it plainly, my life during The Biggest Loser was pretty boring. My life after was anything but boring!
See you tomorrow.
My Life After The Biggest Loser Part 1
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 21st, 2010
This is a serious question I want you to think about. What do you suppose would happen to you if you walked up to someone at the grocery store, looked in their cart, and then picked something up and asked them if they should be eating whatever it was that you picked up?
They may look at you like you were crazy or they may spray you with a can of pepper spray. This very incident has happened to my wife and I on several occasions. When you go on television you open yourself up to receive unsolicited opinions both bad and good.
Here’s the weird part, we don’t mind when this happens to us. It is our life. Suzy and I have opened our lives up to the world. People know a lot about us, they know about our children, they know about our marraige, we have made that available to them.
The thing is that the people they “know”, they really don’t know at all. Most of what they know is based on CHARACTERS from television. I changed a lot during my time on BL. There are actually very few people who really know me.
When I first signed up to go on the show I was very naive. Seriously, I thought that when you go on a reality show you just have a camera following you around while you do whatever it is you do. I didn’t know about filming days or interviews or doing press. I was like the country bumpkin going to the big city.
I’m not going to lie, when I arrived at the BL ranch I was there to workout, lose weight, and win some money. That was it. I didn’t care about getting famous or being on tv. Needless to say, I was a tough person to work with. I didn’t realize until later in the process that I was a character in a story.
What people see each week is a two hour story based on hundreds of hours of footage. What the viewer gets to see, and the opinions that they form by watching, is based only on what the story line is for that week. You will never really get to know the people on the show unless you meet them personally.
“Matt, quit complaining. You won a bunch of money and this what you get.” You are right and I am not complaining, in fact, I enjoy it. My career as a speaker depends upon people wanting to see me and hear about my life. What I am saying is that I had no idea how much life would change as a result of being on BL.
Yes, it is tough when you read some of the harsh words that people say from time to time and yes I do see it. I would bet that most people who have been on the show see what is being written about them. What I am saying today is this. I wish that people would think about what they are saying about another person when they say what they say. I wish they would give the contestants the courtesy to be human, to make mistakes and even have struggles.
I love this country and the rights that we have. I believe in free and uncensored speech and opinions. All I ask is that before saying what a horrible person someone is or calling them names is that we think about a couple of things. First, you may not really know that person or what they are going through. Second, that person probably has family and friends who do know them and words from a stranger can hurt.
For me, words from strangers can sting but often they motivate me. You wouldn’t believe the things that people said about me when it was announced that I was doing the Kona Ironman. At first it was a little rough but then I used it to motivate me.
Lesson for today: The people who go on BL are real people. They have feelings. They have struggles and successes. They have jobs, families, and friends. They have opened up their lives in order to inspire, motivate, and yes, even entertain perfect strangers. Keep that in mind next time you may feel like tearing them down.
As for me, let it rip! I love the good and the bad of being a “celebrity”. It allows for me to have a great life, spend time with my family and love my career. I appreciate and value the opinions that I get from everybody because at the end of the day I know who I am. My family, friends, and my God know who I am and that is all I need to know.
See you tomorrow!
PS. For those who were wondering if I ever tried to reach out and talk to Jillian, the answer is yes. I wouldn’t have talked about it if I hadn’t taken action on my end.
Stop Psyching Yourself Out!
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on August 12th, 2009
This weekend I will be competing in my first Ironman 70.3 (half Ironman). The race will consist of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride and a 13.1 mile run. Lately as I have been talking to people they will ask me what I think it will be like to run a half marathon after swimming and biking. I always tell them that I will give them an answer after I do it.
A half marathon? Wow, that really sounds intimidating. I have chosen not to call it a half marathon when I am talking to others. Somehow just calling it a 13.1 mile run makes it seem less intimidating to me.
Our minds are amazing and sometimes mysterious things. I know that 13.1 miles is technically a half marathon and when a person hears the word marathon they almost instantly start thinking of the Boston or Chicago Marathons. They envision people crawling across the finish lines and cramping up. They envision pain and suffering.
Lets think about this. How can you get yourself excited for something that conjures up such vivid images of pain? The answer is simple, you replace those images in your mind. Is me saying 13.1 mile run rather than half marathon going to make it less difficult? Not necessarily, but it does alleviate the stress in my own mind.
It really doesn’t matter what the endeavor is, the way your mind perceives it makes all the difference. Even with weight-loss you can substitute words to make the potentially long journey less stressful. When I weighed over 350, it was intimidating to think of the huge amount of weight I needed to lose. In fact, for years it was so intimidating that I simply chose to do nothing.
I would psych myself out before I even began. I know I am not alone in doing this. Often we start out with the best intentions only to get frustrated when we realize the enormity of what we have decided to do. This is exactly when we need to think of what we are saying to ourselves.
If I needed to lose 100 pounds and only focused on the number 100 I would undoubtedly get discouraged when each week I only saw a 1-2 pound loss. If after a week I got on the scale and saw that I still needed to lose 98 pounds chances are I would immediately think “I am still so close to having to lose 100 pounds.” Because of shows like The Biggest Loser, many of us feel that we should be losing outrageous numbers each week.
The reality is that if we would shift our focus from the 100 pounds that we need to lose over to the 2 pounds that we did lose, our journey could become much more enjoyable and manageable.
Don’t be afraid to trick yourself and don’t be embarrassed by the tricks that work for you. Break the big challenge down and press on toward your goal. It may be as simple as changing the marathon of weight-loss to the 26.2 miles of weight-loss. It’s still a long way to go, but can conjure up two completely different images.
When it comes to psyching ourselves out, we have to personally give our minds permission to allow it to happen.
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.
