Good v Bad Knees

The world is an unfair place sometimes. 

It does not always follow that if you work hard you get rewarded, that if you are a good person then good things will happen to you, that eating well everyday will not save you from cancer, that being kind to animals will save you being eaten by a shark, smiling a lot will make you happy.

This is how I feel today, that the world sucks! Terrible way to start a blog post, sorry. 

You see, I have bad knees, really bad, I can barely walk some days and I need to lose weight, which I need good knees for. The reason I have bad knees, is that I needed to lose weight and I used my then good knees that are now bad knees.

About 6 years ago, I started running and doing long distance walking. I did this because the one hour daily walk was not enough to make me lose weight. I had to up the ante. So I started doing two hour walks, then walking home from work (17kms). I then started meeting up with my best friend and would walk the ten km bridges walk two or three times a week. Then we started to run it. I was also running every second day, five kms plus the days in between walking. Power walking, not just a stroll. 

I was still fighting the weight, doing Jenny Craig and religiously going to see my counsellor every week for a weigh in. Great, thats half a kilo lost this week. 300 grams the next week. What!!?  I put on 400 grams how can that be? Oh, yeah, I had a few G&T's. Week after week of this, in fact I did it for a whole year. Eating 1200 calories a day, week in, week out. Agonising over every calorie and feeling guilt for every indiscretion. 

To counter balance the indiscretions (and I am not talking about two pizzas and five meat pie blowouts, I am talking a few chips and a couple of drinks) I added in going to a gym for three times a week. Working one on one with a personal trainer for one full hour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. For months and months and thousands and thousands of dollars.

I was fit. Very fit. I was toned and had great muscles, especially in my legs. Oh the squats I could do. On a bosu board, crunches and rowing and lifting weights. She was tough my trainer, if I rang to say I was skipping a session she would say thats ok, we can pick it up 5am tomorrow morning. I very rarely missed a session. 

So, you would think with all this hard exercise, and a 1200 calorie a day diet, I would have looked Kate-Moss-amazing? Sure my skin glowed, I looked really healthy, but, and here is the but that makes me weep, but, I was still a size 16 at best. 

No matter how hard I worked at it, I was still going to be a big girl. And this breaks my heart, and I really did work very, very hard. I had to push myself sometimes way past the point of comfort. It was never something I looked forward to, it was something I had to do and quitting was not an option. It simply had to be done. The only thing I did get pleasure from was challenging myself to get better and go further, to run longer distances, and beat the day before record. I entered the city to surf fun run and completed the 12.5 kms. 

And this was the time and place my knee started to play up. It was sore towards the end of the run but I was determined to finish. And I did. The pain was not too bad, but I eased off on so many runs a week, and cut down the walking to a few times a week. I still did a few walks from my office in the city to home, but I had to slow the pace. I continued at the gym and my trainer, worked with my knee, building strength in it and trying not to aggravate the situation. But it got worse and worse and my head started to pipe up about all this intense hard work I had been doing and really, what had it got me? Damaged knees and still a fat body.

How do you come back from that?

Now, everyday both my knees are aching and painful and stiff. I can't lay on my side as my knees grind and put pressure on each other, even with a thick pillow between them. So I lie on my back, and can't sleep. Well I can, and I do, but not well. I find myself a few hours later, rolled on my side with a knee so stiff and sore it almost makes me weep.

I get up from sitting and my knees won't work properly. I hobble, like I am 100. I went out in the city the other night and had to walk a mere 300 metres, it killed me. Working in the garden is an exercise in pushing through the pain. I do it, but pay for it dearly.

Now I need new knees. An operation my Dr does not want to do until I am older. I will need to lose weight before the operation so that the recovery is better.

How do I do this without good knees? If I could not lose weight on a diet and all that exercise, how on earth will I do it with bad knees? Guess I better start liking water and ... I was going to say bread, but that's a carb ... better just be drinking water.

It's a consumer world and I want my money back, as the product did not do what it said it would do on the box.


See, told you the world was unfair!

PS: I know that there are so many others out there with problems 100 times worse than this. I know that having a pity party will not help. I just wanted to get this out of my mind so me and my knees can move forward.

PPS: The bright side is that in the event of a world disaster, I will live the longest as I have a superior metabolism.