If You Tell The Truth You Will Lose Weight

“Honesty is the best policy,” is a saying that can be improved. I would rewrite it as “Honesty is your friend.” The problem with it saying it is the best policy implies that something other than honesty might be a good choice, not just the worst choice. The opposite of “Honesty is your friend,” is that being dishonest is either not your friend or your enemy, either way it is bad for you.

As a person who has gone up and down the scale multiple times there is one big lesson I have learned, forgotten, relearned, ignored and relearned again; that is that I must be honest with myself everyday. People who lose and gain weight know why it happens. It should not be a surprise.

When I went to Weight Watchers years ago and stood in line week after week to stand on the scale in front of some nice underpaid Weight Watcher worker I always knew if I was going to have a good week or a bad week. I was not alone there. I never once heard anyone say, “You’re kidding, I really gained two pounds?”

I was successful at Weight Watchers. It was easy. They gave me the rules and I learned that if I followed them, measured correctly, wrote down exactly what I was eating I would win the game. Eventually I got to the point that I knew way more than any Weight Watcher Leader, but I still went to meetings so I could be weighed in by someone else. I thought that I needed that accountability to be successful.

Then I started lying to myself, I can eat a cookie and maintain, then two cookies, then four. Then I gained weight, then I stopped going to meetings to get weighed in because I knew I was failing. So I kept failing and gaining and failing again.

Luckily I woke up one day and had an honest conversation with myself that I was the only one who could help me lose weight. If I just did the right things that I already knew, and held myself accountable then I would win. I did not need to have someone else weigh me, because that kept me one step away from my own accountability.

Not that I did not weigh myself everyday when I went to Weight Watchers, but somehow in the warped mind of a food addict I thought that if I was having a bad week and I did not get weighed in by that other person then that weight did not really count. I was giving my accountability away.

That poor person who did the weighing in had nothing to do with the food I put in my own mouth or the lack of exercise I might have done that week, but just having someone else in the equation somehow offered me a scapegoat. The bottom line is there is no fall guy in life. We are all responsible for our own SH%T, whatever it is.

Living honestly adds simplicity and life is hard enough. Dishonesty is truly your enemy.