The Frog in the Water

I've been reminded again of how often we can become so accustomed to the way things are that we're willing to settle for what we've got.  As I shared a couple of weeks ago, I am dealing with the continued deterioration of my right knee.  This knee has been a bad knee since my mid-20's, when I was young and thin.  I've had two surgeries on it, one at age 30 and a second when I was almost 34, and it's never been great.  Over the years things have gradually deteriorated and I've adjusted my activity in response.

An MRI and x-ray reveal severe arthritis, bone spurs, a meniscus tear and an area that's bone on bone.  Like I said, it's a bad knee :-).  In talking to my orthopedic surgeon, he has been careful to not push surgery (total knee replacement), always emphasizing that it was my life and my body and at whatever point the pain and/or restricted activity was unacceptable, he would replace the knee.

Up until recently, my thinking has been that as long as I take a prescription-strength anti-inflammatory drug, the pain is pretty tolerable most of the time.  Of course, I can't run, can't ride a bike, can't rollerblade, can't sit cross-legged (due to limited range of motion), am finding it difficult to take stairs or walk long distances . . . 

As I started reviewing the things I could no longer do because of my knee, it dawned on me that my activity really has become pretty restricted.  I hadn't realized it because it happened over time, but slowly but surely I've modified my life and my activity level and accepted these modifications as normal. 

This reminds me of the story of the frog in the pot of water.  If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out, but if you put it in a pot of cold water and gradually heat it, the frog will cook and not even realize it because its body will continue to adjust to the changing temperature until it's too late.

For many of us, our weight came on gradually and we adjusted as we went along, accepting this as the new normal.  We stopped doing some of the things we used to do and made all kinds of mental excuses, perhaps even telling ourselves that we didn't want to do those things anymore anyway.  We eventually settled into life as an overweight or, in my case, morbidly obese person.

For others, perhaps you've been overweight your entire life and assume that this is just how it is and it's hard to imagine living a life different than what it is.

It's exciting to see how much this program changes us!  As we begin to lose weight, normal begins to be defined in an entirely new - and wonderful - way.  Things we thought impossible become possible.  Individuals who avoid flying because they could barely fit into an airline seat are now free to travel; people who had trouble walking to the end of their driveway are participating in 5K races; women who only shopped for their clothes online because they needed such large sizes are now going on shopping weekends with friends - the list goes on and on.

Those changes happen as we make the choice to redefine normal in our lives.  We can't do that until we take an honest look at our current reality and determine that it's not acceptable.  That's the first step.  The second step is to allow ourselves to dream and believe that our normal really CAN be redefined in a new and wonderful way.  Once we get a vision of how different a new normal can be, all we have to do is make the choices we need to make to bridge the gap from our current reality to what we want.

Those choices include the choices we'll make today.  Choose wisely :-)