There will come a point in your life when you must look yourself in the mirror and stop lying to yourself. I mean really stop lying to yourself. I’ve been the poster child for lying to yourself for a good 8 years now. As I sat back and watch my weight skyrocket I continued to justify my laziness with some of the dumbest excuses I cooked up in my brain. Blamed me not having to look good anymore because I’m married; which is dumb, I’m lucky my wife put up with my weight gain in our relationship. I would go out and play basketball, play well and point to that being as the determining factor that I am okay. In reality that was complete bull.

In 10 years, I watched my waist go from a 36 to 42, I put on 80 POUNDS!!!! I just sat on my couch playing video games, watching food network and doing everything else but getting my fat ass up and working out consistently. My weight has yoyoed so much in these last 6 years and it’s all because I refused to be honest with myself. I refused to connect the dots around my belly, maybe because I couldn’t. I even spent $40 to do a race and lied to myself about preparing for it. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie that’s all my life has been about in terms of my health and weight. It’s crazy that a guy who prides his self on being brutally honest and always being 100, I couldn’t be honest with myself until a couple weeks ago.

Think about the things you lie to yourself about every day. It might not be your weight and health. It can be your job, your relationships, maybe your wardrobe choices. Whatever it is, truly think about it. Now think about why you lie about these things, why you refuse to admit to yourself that this thing is not good for you. Simple answer, because it’s hard to admit and accept our flaws. We can quickly diagnose other people problems, but when it comes to us we avoid and lie. It’s a defense mechanism that only holds us back from our true potential. It makes life easier to ignore what we don’t like about ourselves or the situation we find ourselves in.

I lied about my weight and health because losing the weight is way harder than putting it on. To gain 80 pounds in 10 years took no work at all. But losing the weight has been difficult because I haven’t been honest with myself. Saturday May 27^th made me face my lies head on. I signed up for this obstacle course race in November and lied about working out for it. I didn’t so when race day came around I suffered through the whole race. Sure, I completed every obstacle but I could’ve been faster and stronger. But if I stopped lying to myself sooner I could’ve finished the race in about 45 minutes instead of just under an hour.

Luckily I decided to stop lying to myself a couple weeks ago. I woke up one morning and I finally had enough. I took a long hard look at myself and had to come to the realization that I can no longer avoid working on myself. I thought long and hard about strategies that I can give about lying to yourself and how to go about progressing in your life. This is what I came up with when I finally said enough is enough in terms of my weight.

1. Stop the BS and be honest with yourself. You can’t even take action steps if you can first admit that you are lying.
2. Figure out why you are lying. What are you scared of, what emotions are evoked when you think about moving forward? Is it fear, anger, victimization, etc.
3. Who are you? Who is the real you, for me I have always considered myself an athlete but how can I be an athlete if I refuse to take working out seriously.
4. Recognize when you are being full of s***. Like I stated earlier, I will go play ball and still hit jumpers, cross people over, still get in the lane and I would say man I’m good. In reality these things were happening few and far between. I might get past a defender but by time I got to the basket they were back on my slow fat bubbly self.
5. Tell others and find support. My wife holds me accountable even when I hate it. When I don’t want to hit the gym, or run, my wife is right there forcing me to get up. I don’t know too many people who are successful without having people there to push them forward. Find someone who will hold you accountable.
6. Be okay with falling short. Failure is not a death sentence it’s just an opportunity to learn, grow and move forward. I remember a few years ago I lost 30 pounds and plateaued. I was stuck at 220 for about 2 weeks. I was so discouraged I stopped doing things that got me down 40 pounds to 220. During my obstacle race I missed hitting this damn gong. I can’t wait for my second crack at it because I know I can hit. Once again failure is an opportunity. 
7. The last thing is hold yourself to the high standards you place on others. We expect way more from others than we do of ourselves. This mind set needs to change you need to hold yourself to higher standards. If you believe in yourself and trust yourself, you will find yourself working harder than you ever imagined.

If you skipped through these 6 steps just remember one thing. Eventually the day is going to come when you are going to be forced to look in the mirror and live with the lie you have spun. I am done lying to myself and I suggest you do the same.