Mountain-man

That's how I feel on the wall. Only its my lungs and chest on fire while my arms and hands are waning in energy trying to get the rope clipped into that next quick-draw: that raw hormonal hard push to turn you red. There's nothing quite like that feeling. Especially when a failure means a 20 ft fall. My knee pain is typically from "abuse". If I'm doing a mountain, there's typically a heavy pack involved, and there's also typically a lot of down-pounding. People don't realize how hard going down is. They complain about going up, and how hard that is, but going down you have to constantly check your momentum, holding back your own weight plus the weight of whatever is in your pack. There's ways to "cheat" or alleviate this, but that's getting a bit more technical. Hiking poles are a lifesaver.

I find that biking really helps strengthen the knees. It's low impact, but gives a great exercise for those joints and good cardio/respiratory.

That can depend on genetics a bit. But I hear ya. I rarely do anything fast food anymore. I try to keep off the sugar and ice cream as I learned the hard way after eating several pints of Ben&Jerry's. I'll still drink a beer every now and then, or a glass of wine. I can't drink soda anymore- gives me the shakes. Frozen pizzas are still a food group for me, but I've cut back on those too. My weight has been coming down closer to where it should be but still need to take more off my old party-keg. My teens were not kind years for me. So healthy choices now are making up for my carelessness of my past.... just need to get that last 15 lbs off!