You're lost in the woods. Night is approaching and there is an excedingly large pack of wolves roaming these woods. They are hungry and you look delicious. Plumped like a Thanksgiving turkey. Easy pickings. But you have it on good authority that there's a cabin out here in the woods and it's warm and safe and it has a special prize for anyone who finds it. An elixir of great power. You also happen to know what direction you have to head to get to the cabin. And lucky you...you also brought a compass. But for whatever reason, you never check your bearings. You wander aimlessly through the woods walking in circles and you feel like you're probably going in the right direction, but you never check the compass.
The sun is going down. You notice more wolves in your periphery. You forget everything you learned in your 6th grade orienteering day in gym. But you possess a special compass. Your compass just has an arrow that tells you which way to go no matter how far off course you get. Look at the compass and go in that direction. Sounds easy enough, and yet so many people are getting torn apart by the wolves every night. They had plenty of time to get to safety but their stubborness and self-reliance only failed them in the end. It's a fact that people who don't have a clear path laid out for them will naturally walk in circles no matter how straight it feels like they are heading.
You know who isn't lost; the wolves. They run these woods. Don't be a victim, check your compass as often as possible and you can make it. The wolves will only be trouble at night. But you can get to the cabin, and you can drink the elixir to find out what powerful magic it's capable of. I've tasted the elixir and it is glorious. I'll tell you what it does in a minute but I need to clear some things up.
It's a dumb little metaphor, but it's how a lot of people are going through their bets. The woods are your weight. Trees are pounds or kilograms. There's a lot of trees in the woods. Some woods are more dense than others. The cabin with the magic elixir is your goal weigh, and every night is a weigh-in date. The compass is your scale. We all have them and they all do the same thing and they are super easy to use. You hop on and it tells you which way you need to go. I'll give you a hint, it's down. It's always down. It's that simple.
Get on the scale, see how bad you screwed up yesterday and fix it today. Then get on the scale tomorrow and see how well you did. Maybe in the woods you got distracted by some pretty flowers or a beautiful sunset or maybe your just overwhelmed by all the trees. These are things like cookies, candy, pizza, birthday parties, holidays, or a trajic event in your life that takes you off course. You know what cake tastes like, but maybe you haven't tried this elixir at the cabin in the woods. Distractions are fine but the sun won't stop going down because a relative died or your because a friend sent cookies. Just get on the scale and change something to turn yourself towards the cabin and start heading that way. Try drinking only water for a week instead of soda, coffee and wine and see what that does on the scale. Try skipping breakfast if you had a big dinner. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Order a medium portion instead of a large. You won't know what works for you without checking the scale.
As with a real compass, it might take some time for things to level out to get an accurate read, but if you're patient, the scale will show you which direction you are heading. I often click on random people's profiles when they say they've made their goal weight or they say they failed this round or that goal. And I'm seeing a trend. It's what sparked me to write up this little story to help people out. People that tend to win have really smooth progress graphs in their profiles. Lots of weigh-ins and lots of solid blue dots. People that are struggling, have a few weigh-ins and then a long straight line up to a hollow circle of a lost bet. It won't happen over night, but within a week or two, checking the scale every day or two, or three, you will see a trend. If that trend is an upward one, then the wolves will be lurking in the shadows licking their chops, waiting for you to fail. But if you can make a few simple changes, you can easily get to your goal weight.
Back to the story and the fabled elixir. If you haven't figured it out yet, the elixer is DietBet. The magic power imbued into this tasty beverage is that drinking it can turn you into a wolf for one night. Each person that uses their compass to get to the cabin can drink the elixir and become the one of the wolves they were once so afraid of while out in the woods. A rare twist of clichés where the hunted becomes the hunter. And once you're in wolf mode, you're out for blood. In this case, other people's money. And as a wolf you don't feel bad picking off the helpless people because if they roles were revearsed, they wouldn't hesitate, and they had their chance, same as you, to find the elixir and drink it themselves.
Whether you make it to the cabin and go out hunting, or you end up as a meal, every day is the same. You wake up, lost in the woods and you have your trusty compass and a decision. Decide whether to check the compass and head toward the cabin, or stop and smell the roses...every time you see a rose. Sure you can always take a break and enjoy the good things in life, but the wolves are coming and you can join them for dinner, or as dinner.