Does obesity cause genu valgum [knock knees]?

The doctor's appointment went well! I'm now walking around... kind of. I'm not officially weight bearing YET, but he did say to start putting some pressure on it, but keep the majority of my weight on my walker when I step. He said to put about sixty pounds of pressure on my knee when I walk, which is kind of hard to gauge because I'm around 200 pounds now, but I'm just putting a little bit of pressure on there and so far, no pain! I'm like a little kid, excited to be walking around for the first time in ten weeks! It's nothing short of a miracle, what my surgeon was able to do for me. My open wedge osteotomy has really changed my life.

In the past, I always had this idea that my knock knees were due to me being a really overweight child. I have even wrote on this blog that my obesity caused this, and it really didn't. My girlfriend and I were disagreeing about this very thing. She said it was genetic, but I just knew that it had to do with my being so heavy. Now, I had seen heavier people than me NOT have it, but I just figured that I was so fat from such a young age that it was almost like my poor legs could not support my weight... almost like a prison that I did the crime for. Also, my knock knee correction surgeon from before actually made my knee more deformed, so I was petrified of surgery in the first place.

To get on with it, I asked my surgeon if it was due to my weight and he said a flat out, "completely unrelated." He is a straight shooter, so I know he would have been honest with me if it did cause knock knees. On wikipedia, it says that obesity DOES cause it, but I think that my surgeon who has been doing these surgeries for twenty years is a more reliable source than wiki.

So, why the heck does this matter anyway? Well, I lived with a deformity in my left knee for 17 long years (from the time I was 12 to 29 now), and I kind of felt like I deserved it for doing so much eating.... like it was some sort of weird self-inflicted punishment. Turns out, it's congenital, which means that it is something that I was born with... but the good news is that it can be corrected and I don't deserve a life of pain, after all.

It's my hope that others will find this entry if they, too, wonder if they caused their own form of knock knees... In two words, heck no!

Low carb menu:
- Two sausage patties and two eggs, fried in butter
- Two pieces of zucchini pizza with sausage, ham, pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, mozzarella and marinara sauce with unpotato salad
- Ham and cheesy casserole with green onions, broccoli and cauliflower
- Half of a chicken breast, breaded in parm and dipped in low carb honey mustard with half an oopsie roll and two small tomato slices
- Carbquik cheddar bay biscuit

I made the last three items on the list as a special seven-month anniversary with me and my girlfriend. I don't ever remember being happier. I do have to take responsibility for my own happiness, but it helps having an amazing person to live your life with, if you ask me. The cheddar bay biscuits are amazing! They do include Carbquik, which is a carbalose flour, so I do not want to make them part of my daily or even weekly plan, but every once in a while, on a special occasion, they are certainly a welcomed treat. They really do taste like the biscuits from Red Lobster, so if you like those, you are going to LOVE these. I got eleven big biscuits out of the batch.