Managing Expectations

How do we manage expectations, especially when reality doesn't meet our expectations?  How do we avoid the danger of frustration and disappointment when things aren't going as we thought they would - and should - go?

That is my challenge right now, 17 days into my recovery from my knee replacement surgery.  Because I am relatively young for this type of surgery (I just turned 59) and because I am healthy and managed to stay fairly active despite my bad knee, I had very high expectations going into this surgery.  I reasoned that since I wasn't in my mid-70's and didn't have a list of health issues, I would set new records for recovery.  That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.  I fully expected to meet or exceed normal benchmarks in physical therapy and that it would be no time at all before I was back, better than ever.

As you may have guessed, what I expected isn't happening, at least not yet.  The truth is that I have fallen behind in meeting those benchmarks because of the amount of swelling I still have in my knee - far more swelling than what would normally be seen at this point in the recovery process.  What my surgeon tells me and what the physical therapist tells me is that my knee was in far worse condition than anticipated, so the surgery was more extensive than the average knee replacement.  This means more swelling and a longer recovery period.  And there isn't a thing I can do about it other than wait and keep my leg elevated, iced and continue wearing a compression stocking.

One of the hardest things about this has been realizing that my expectations are falling far short of reality.  I didn't expect to still be so immobilized this far out and I find myself getting frustrated and discouraged.  But frustration and discouragement won't change a thing, except make me not so much fun to live with.  The reality is that I am doing all I can, that I cannot speed up the process, and that I will eventually get to where I want to be, but it will take longer than expected.  My challenge is to rest in the moment and allow the process to continue. 

So how does this apply to being on Take Shape for Life/Medifast's 5&1 plan?  I think we all start this program with high hopes that the weight will absolutely melt off because we want to get to our goal as quickly as possible.  We know that women lose, on average, 2-4 pounds per week and men lose 3-5 pounds per week, and we often expect to see a 4-5 pound loss every week.  When we're staying on plan and the scale is moving at a slower pace than we expected, it can be incredibly frustrating and discouraging.  We may see others on plan who are losing faster than we are and that only feeds our own frustration.   We may have set a goal of losing a certain amount of weight or reaching our goal by a specific date, and if that date comes and goes and we didn't quite hit the mark we set, discouragement sets in.  Rather than celebrate how far we HAVE come, we focus on the fact that we fell short of our goal.

One of the things I realized when I started on 5&1 was that I had absolutely no control over how fast my body relinquished the weight.  All I could control was whether or not I stayed on plan.  I made the decision to follow the program as long as it took, knowing that if I did that I would eventually reach my goal - and I did!  I will be honest and admit that those weeks when the scale only moved a pound, or when it didn't move at all, were frustrating - of course they were!  But I knew that I'd done all I could and I knew I had to trust the process and stay on plan regardless of what the scale said, knowing that eventually the scale would catch up.

Whether it's recovering from surgery or continuing on your journey to a healthy weight, there are things we can control and things we can't.  Like the wonderful Serenity Prayer, we have to learn to change the things we can change, accept the things we can't, and ask the Lord for the wisdom to know the difference.  What we can control is whether or not we choose to follow the path and do all we can do, and we can choose our attitude.   My challenge - and yours - is to choose wisely :-)