I was doom scrolling TikTok like I normally do, and one of the things about the algorithm is that people really love watching clips from classic movies. The classic movie being shown this past week was from the Rocky movie (there was a Creed edit that went viral). Now I wasn't too familiar with the Rocky series, I've only ever watched Creed to completion in high school when my calc teacher had nothing better for us to do post AP test, but the clip I saw on TikTok really spoke to me. Rocky Balboa was training to fight some scary dude and sparring with his long time rival Apollo Creed, and his head just wasn't in the game. Apollo threw a fit telling himself to get it together, but Rocky insisted on trying again tomorrow, to which Apollo responded "There is no tomorrow."
There is no tomorrow... because similar to a lesson my dad taught me to fix my chronic procrastination, tomorrow never comes. The double meaning specific to this scene is Rocky took it as "there isn't going to be a tomorrow because the guy I'm fighting is gonna kill me." The beauty of this double meaning is that while there is a literal double meaning present, you could also see it as the former being causation for the latter, tomorrow will not come for you because you're looking for an escape from the present; resulting in you remaining your unprepared and stagnant self.
I've been on a weight loss journey, to be honest I've been on a weight loss journey since I was 5. It's had its ups and downs but ultimately my weight goes up year after year, I've never broken even or gone down. Obviously as a growing boy this is to be expected, but I'm old enough now that it should at the very least be stable. One of the hardest things I'm continuously trying to come to terms with is that I tell myself "I know exactly what I need to do to lose this weight." Time and time again the inspiration I need to get started fades and the discipline I need to see it through falls apart. It can be something as small as stringing together cheat meals into cheat days into cheat weeks and so on and so forth. Same deal with taking a break from a daily workout routine.
I'm now old enough where staying at the weight I am is already severely detrimental to my future health, and I can feel the years whisking away the longer I take to gain traction. Thus, I write this post as a reminder to my future self who will eventually succeed. There is no tomorrow, there are no breaks, there is no such thing as taking a temporary cheat. You can have setbacks, very minor and temporary setbacks, but every cheat day or day you don't go out for even a basic 20 minute run is a day you've given up on the diet. The diet you go with is not the diet you hold until you hit a weight target, it is your new life. The sooner you come to realize this, even on the rainy days, the days you feel exceedingly tired, the days you get hungry, the days shit hits the fan, the days you don't see a path forward, the sooner you'll see tomorrow.
My hope is that the day tomorrow arrives I'll be able to read this again and think "what can't I do?"