Determined To Succeed

It’s Sunday morning, it’s early, I’m groggy and I’m still trying to wrap my head around some of the movie logic in the movie I watched last night – “Hot Tub Time Machine.” Did you guys see that one? It’s the story of four guys who get transported back to 1986 thanks to a really nifty (and wet) time machine and the accidental spill of a modern-day energy drink.

Following me so far? The hi-jinks ensue when our band of best friends (well, three best friends and one kid who will ultimately find out his origins) realize they can’t screw with too much in the space-time continuum or else the future will altered BUT (and there wouldn’t be a movie without a but) they want some things to change because in the future none of their lives turn out the way they wanted them to.

If I could turn back time and go back to 1986, what would I change? I’d be in high school. Assuming it’s summer I’d be wrapping up my sophomore year. “Top Gun” was in theaters. I was only 15. I’d change my future by “inventing” lots of stuff. Laptops, iPods and Google chief among them. I’d also “create” such wonderful, high-grossing movies like “Die Hard,” “The Lion King,” “Forrest Gump,” “Titanic,” “The Matrix,” “True Lies,” “Predator” and so many more. I mean, who wouldn’t create a better life for themselves in the future by changing something critical in the past. Sure, it might mean the rest of the world is irrevocably changed (ala the Butterfly Effect) but who cares I’d be changed and for the better.

But this wouldn’t be Bill’s Weight Loss Blog if I also didn’t cop to the fact I’d change the physical me, too. I’d stop eating all the bad foods I ate back then. I’d start exercising regularly (doing 20 tummy crunches a day might have made me get a set of 6-pack abs of steel instead of my 24-case of flabs of steels). Of course I would do this, too, because I realize what 24 years of extra time would mean to my body. I would never have achieved 400 pounds. I would never have had high blood pressure. I would have been much healthier much sooner and able to enjoy every bit of those 24 extra years (especially thanking God for extra time with my mom, JoAnn – I love you, Ma) of healthier, stronger Bill.

Someone very wise once told me that, while you can reconcile and make peace with the past, it is just that – the past. The not-so-smart choices you made back then are done. All you can do now is make much smarter ones moving forward. That just happens to be the driving principle behind one of my cardinal rules of weight loss – forgiving yourself the weight you gained up to now and not letting that weigh you down as you begin a weight loss journey. Sure you are the weight you are, but instead of being sad about how that happened, concentrate on what you’re gonna do about it now and every day after today.

My friends, we may not be able to turn back time like they do in the movies but we don’t need a time machine to start altering our lives so that our future selves benefit from our actions today. In other words, do not lament 24 years ago, project 24 years into the future. For me, I’ll be 63 and a damn-sight healthier and stronger than I would have been had I not started this journey. Why? Because I am in this moment of time telling me to change what could possibly be my unhealthy, obese and self-destructive future. And what could have easily been a one-way ticket to an early death – 400 pounds ain’t healthy for no one – is now a great chance to create a better life for me in 2034 by changing that something critical in the past…today…in 2010.

So think about that stuff the next time you curl up with a movie on a Saturday night. Sure, the movie itself may be just O.K. (“Hot Tub Time Machine” did have its moments) but one of the true gifts of the movies is that they all make us think about possibility.

So now that you are here in the present, what are you going to do today? Me? I think I’ll start with 20 tricep dips and, hmmmmm, maybe 20 or so tummy crunches…

Oh and P.S. – Thanks to writing this blog today I now have Cher’s song “If I Could Turn Back Time” running through my head. Thanks a lot, me. I’ll be spending all day with a fork in my eyeball trying to get that song out of my head.