A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …

I was quite the gym rat. In high school and college, I practically lived in the weight room. I loved it. I thought I was hot stuff, man. I had the padded weightlifting gloves, one bad-looking weight belt and dang if I couldn’t sling the iron around. If everyone was watching, that was cool. They could learn something.

As the headline says (to steal from George Lucas), that was so many years ago now even in my own head it sounds like science fiction. Twenty-some years later, there are two Gregs; Greg Then and Greg Now. Greg Now can see how foolish Greg Then was and how his youthful hubris filled his own mind with his own greatness, while those around him probably never noticed. Greg Then still speaks to Greg Now every once in awhile.

I can faintly hear him telling him to get back into the gym. He sounds like the fictional Austrian muscle-heads Hans and Franz from “Saturday Night Live.”

“Look at the little girlie man in his little girlie house sitting on his girlie couch,” Hans says.

“Ya,” Franz chimes in. “Hear me now and believe me later, you are wishing you had bodies like ours. You are wishing to be like Hans and Franz.”

“Ya,” Hans continues. “You sit there all flabby like. Go to the gym so ve can pump (clap) you up!”

I may have known this for a long time, but it hit me like a flash of light today why I haven’t been to the gym for so long. The irony is, it’s for the same reason you couldn’t pull me out of it when I was Greg Then. Sure, I was young and cocky then, thought I was all that and everyone in the gym was watching me. Now that I’m not, I’m still afraid everyone in the gym will be watching me.

Instead of approvingly, I imagine those watching me are more akin to the crowd that gathers to gawk at a whale after he’s beached himself. I think this is a holdover from Greg Then, who at age 18, would look at Greg Now with that gawker’s eye.

I have to admit, doing these blogs and putting photos of myself out there doing Trim to Win makes me feel a little like the Mat-Su Valley’s beached whale. But I’m a realist as well. I’m a happy, well-adjusted guy who, like many others, wants to lose weight.

Actually, that’s not my No. 1 goal. I’m honestly not thinking about how many pounds that can come off; instead, I’m concentrating on getting my lazy butt off that couch (geez, were Hans and Franz really right about something?), change my eating habits and finally take care of any other health issues I’ve put off for too long. My weight is a product of lifestyle, so the plan is change the lifestyle and the weight loss will happen.

As I’m writing this blog, an e-mail comes over from a local man who says that he also weighs in at more than 300 pounds and wants to make a change. He writes that after reading my blog and reviewing the Trim to Win entry information, he’s going to sign up.

“You have inspired me to follow your example,” he writes.

You know, he’s inspired me as well, and because of that I say gawk away.