Painful Excuses Not to Exercise

I met a fellow the other day who told me that he couldn't exercise because he has bad knees.

Hmmm. I remember being in lots of pain and not wanting to exercise. I remember having problems with my knees. I also remember that I couldn't do certain types of exercise.

Maybe that is what he meant, but I think he was really using his knees as an excuse not to move around at all.

Why do I say this? Because I've been there...and because this was a very, very large man. He could easily drop 150 pounds and not be skinny. I don't mean this as criticism...again, I've been there.

What I do know for sure is that by moving our bodies more and doing some of the other techniques I suggest in Refuse to Diet we can drop some pounds which will then take some of the pressure off our knees...and our backs, hips and lots of other body parts, too!

In my case I had torn cartilage in my knees. I had them operated on and that helped a lot, but still being 300 pounds is more than my knees were meant to handle. It is amazing to me what I can do now that I've dropped 125 pounds that I couldn't do before!

For folks like this gentleman, oh, call him "Joe"...for folks like Joe who really need to have knee replacement surgery, most doctors won't do the surgery if you are obese. At first this might not seem fair, but I do believe the doctors are looking out for you in 2 ways...

1. surgery has inherent dangers and it is significantly more dangerous if you are obese
2. they want you to have success, and you will have to go through physical therapy and rehab after the surgery...they want you to demonstrate that you will make that effort. Otherwise you will be worse off than you were before the surgery.

So do yourself a favor...if you are significantly overweight, apply some of the Refuse To Diet principles and start to improve your health. Don't focus on how much you want to drop totally, start where you are and work in small increments. Focus on what you can do right now. If you do that every day you will be amazed when you look back later at the progress you have made.

Whether you have to lose weight in order to have surgery, or you want to drop some pounds to help ease the aching in the feet, knees, hips, back...I know you can do it as long as you work on it with your mind first...one step at a time!