I was on Instagram laughing about how Hazel grabs these huge sticks and tries to get me to throw them…

And especially how, when she runs by me with a stick in her mouth, the stick hits me in the back of the leg.

(We’re often on big, wide trails when she finds these sticks, yet she just HAS to run close enough to me to whack me with them. 😂)

After I laughed about her hitting me with these sticks, I turned off my phone, and we continued on our walk.

Suddenly, she raced by at full speed with a massive branch in her mouth, complete with rows of smaller branches sticking out of it. I can’t believe she could move it!

“Ow!!” I yelled as it whacked me and sliced open the back of my calf.

Startled, Hazel dropped the thing and raced into the woods (she’s sensitive to me raising my voice for any reason).

I coaxed her back, and we continued on our walk.

As I felt blood running down my calf, I thought about a warning parents often give their kids: It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

It reminded me of how people new to Code Red often wanna giggle about the fact they cheated.

If someone puts a post like that up in any Code Red community, we take it down, because we don’t see cheats as a laughing matter.

Not for somebody who’s on death’s door, with 100 extra pounds of fat on their body, raging type 2 diabetes, crippling joint pain, and so much brain fog that they might kill someone every time they get behind the wheel of a car.

To be clear, I’m not talking about people who are struggling to stay on track and post for support.

I’m talking about people who actually laughed about the fact they cheated…

Just like I laughed about Hazel’s antics with those sticks…

Until one of them sliced open my leg.

Cheating may seem “funny”…

Until your doctor sits you down and says, “You’ve got type 2 diabetes and need to go on Metformin before you lose a foot”…

Until you go shopping for a dress for your son’s wedding and find yourself crying on the floor of the dressing room because nothing fits, which means you’re gonna be the “fat mom” at the wedding…

Until you find yourself leaning over a gross toilet, throwing up what you ate because the Ozempic you’re taking makes you too sick to keep food down.

Please don’t laugh about cheating.

I’m not saying you should flog yourself, but don’t make it a joke. It’s not.

You deserve better than that.

You deserve to be healthy, to have a great relationship with food, and to feel good about yourself.

You deserve to TAKE YOUR LIFE BACK.

If you need a kick of motivation to get with the program, go here to see where you can watch my documentary, Code Red: Diaries of Madness: www.coderedlifestyle.com/watch. Then rent or buy it and watch it.

It’s not about weight loss per se, but it is about fighting through a grueling transformation (in this case, making a bodybuilding comeback at age 46) when every part of you wants to quit.

And it’s about getting so sick of your own bull crap that you’ll finally rise up and put it all on the line to be different.

A lot of the feedback I’ve gotten is about how motivated people are to do hard things, because they want to be able to say, “I do hard things. I am resilient. I am strong. I DID THIS!”

Get motivated at www.coderedlifestyle.com/watch.