We often remind people, and ourselves to consider the notion that it’s not what you are today, it’s what you are going to become as you age. I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the faster time seems to fly. Hard to believe it is August. Harder to believe it’s close to 2010. Harder still, is to look at my driver’s license and ponder my own age. How did that happen? How did I get this old that fast?

I say all of this to focus you in on the word “regret.” Too many people have the R word as part of their makeup. “I wish I would have”… is a commonality among most who have let their health and fitness level slide, only to look up one day at that driver’s license and realize the speed at which their time on this earth is passing. “I used to be _____________” thinner, healthier, X sizes smaller, a track athlete, a swimmer, a runner, a cyclist, a volleyball champ, a basketball star, a football hero. The list goes on and on, but the theme rings through regret. “Life took over,” and “I gave up on me.”

A recent study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology makes a few salient points. The study included 2,845 participants who were an average of 74 years old when they enrolled. They had no mobility problems at the start of the study. During seven years of follow-up, women who were overweight or obese (body mass index of 25 or greater) from their mid 20s to their 70s were nearly three times more likely to develop mobility problems than women who were normal weight throughout their lives. Overweight or obese men were 1.6 times more likely to develop mobility problems.

The researchers also found that women who were obese (BMI of 30 or greater) at age 50, but not in their 70s, were 2.7 times more likely to develop mobility limitations than women who weren’t obese throughout their lives. Men with a similar weight history were 1.8 times more likely to develop mobility problems.

“In both men and women, being overweight or obese put them at greater risk of developing mobility limitations in old age, and the longer they had been overweight or obese, the greater the risk,” lead investigator Denise Houston, an expert on aging and nutrition and an assistant professor of gerontology at the School of Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a center news release.

Listen, you don’t have to look or feel great to get started, but you do have to get started, in order to look and feel great. Don’t reflect back one day with regret and wish you would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. You can change your future, by changing your present. What’s your preference, cane, walker, wheel chair, bed or standing, moving and fighting for every quality moment you have?