Stop obsessing?? Really?!?  I'm sorry.  I'm here trying to recover and do all I can to get back to 'normal'.  I think for someone going through this right now, it is just very hard to read your comment that it's "much quicker and easier" because I have seen nothing quick or easy about my recovery.  Since your conclusion was such ("the hardest luck stories come from people who are likely out of shape and overweight"), that led me to believe you were saying I was out of shape and overweight, which I didn't appreciate.  I still have yet to hear where you received the information that led you to this conclusion.  Until this thread, I have never discussed my shape/weight, etc. and I rarely ever see others share that info.  Like I said.... Yes, there is a correlation... and I'm not saying it doesn't help to be in good shape/health... Perhaps you just should have made your point/given your advice/support a little differently.

I did read what you wrote - you had an ACL tear (I'm sorry) - and I am just reiterating...  You can't compare two different injuries - period.  I know very little about torn ligaments or cartilage; what I do know and was sharing is that my OS considers that a lesser issue than what I'm dealing with now.

I don't know if being in shape has much to do with anything in recovering from this injury. People who are in shape generally work out and those work out habits may transfer over into physical therapy and be a benefit to them there. Being at healthy/proper weight, on the other hand, does make a difference. If I remember right, the way my therapist explained things to me is that every extra pound you carry translates into 4 extra pounds of force/weight born by your knee. Hence, in my case, the 20 extra pounds I put on after my injury equaled 80 extra pounds of force on my knee. My therapist said my knee would feel better and I'd probably be more comfortable doing things on it if I lost that weight plus it would just be less wear and tear on it too, which he said would be a good thing. He also said that being at healthy weight and exercising would help prevent arthritis from developing in the joint.

After spending just over 3 years on this board there are only two things that I think I can say I have learned that seem to have proven themselves out over time.

1. Every knee injury is different/unique and everyone will recover in different ways. What may be the case for one person won't be for another, etc. There is just no predicting how fast a person will recover. There are just too many variables involved.

2. Of course, having said that, Youth does seem to be a BIG boon in recovery. Younger people seem to heal better and recover faster then older people. In the time I have been here there have been several people who have wandered through these boards who were in their late teens to early 20's. For the most part they all seemed to heal well and recover fairly quickly. None of them stuck around long. Generally speaking when people drop off these boards it's because they have recovered and are back to their "normal" lives. Not many seem to stick around once this happens, at best they drop in once in a while check things out and maybe make a post or 2 while they are they are back. Pretty much all of those younger people didn't post for much more then 6 months or so. Some of them came back after about a year to mention they were doing well and back to doing the things they did before their injury. I believe we had 1 guy that was playing baseball again 1 year after his injury. That's pretty remarkable!

I am now just over a year after hardware removal and roughly 2 years after accident.  Since the hardware removal my recovery has been great, but not without hard work.  I started slowly walking, less than a mile a morning, then I build that up to several miles, then I started jogging, or hobbling if you will.  Well, you get the story, but it was every day.  I kept at it, cut 50 lbs, and am now running over 30 miles a week and have a marathon scheduled for exactly a year after I started my walking after hardware removal.  I still do not have my full ROM back and may not get it.  But a big thing for me has been building the muscles in my leg back up to what they were.  That has been the biggest and best thing I could do for myself.  It has strengthened the knee area so I now can run 20 miles in under 3 hours without much effort.  Granted I am in my early 40s, but I am now in better shape than I was in my early 30s, so I feel good about that.  My leg still gets stiff when I sit in a car or on an airplane for long periods of time.  But I can walk that off pretty quick.  Also it hurts to kneel on it still.  I guess everyone is different, and recovery from something like this has been a long road and I still feel like the next few years will bring more recovery and change.