Not All Steps Are Forward...

R.I.C.E. is how I spent my night!

So that picture over there....that's my left knee tonight.  It's wrapped in an ace bandage for compression.  It's elevated and resting.  And there's ice under my knee to help ease the pain.  (That hasn't happened quite yet, btw!) Your typical R.I.C.E. night!



Part of living with the consequences of my poor choices earlier in life means living with nights like this one.  I haven't done anything to injure this knee.  Not today.  The damage was done long ago.  And every day I walk on these bad knees, I further aggravate the injury.  Did you know that every pound you weigh is FOUR pounds of pressure on your knees?  The scale read 252 this morning...you do the math!  My knees are overworked on a daily basis, that's for sure!

This is one of the most frustrating things for me on my journey, honestly.  Not all steps I take are forward.  And not all of them are as far or as fast as I want them to go.  It would be easy on a night like this to lose focus, to dwell on what's NOT going right instead of on the goals I have ahead of me.  And there are really times where the pain gets bad enough that I do just that.  But really, in all areas of my life, I've found that focusing on negatives does nothing beneficial for me.  I can't find one positive thing that has ever happened for me in life because I dwelt on my problems.

Conversely, I can tell you many incredible things that have happened because I've chosen to count my blessings.  So tonight, I'm going to take time to name them and refocus.  Tomorrow will be a very limited cardio day...so I'll just focus on weight training instead.  At the gym, instead of the treadmill and bike, I'll be using the arm machines and doing crunches.  Training doesn't stop and goals don't change because of these little bumps in the road.  I'll be back to walking and biking as soon as the knee allows it...you can count on it!

Thanks for sharing the journey with me...even on the tough days like today!!