Scale Baiting

Pigassus has claimed repeatedly that bathroom scales are Devil-made. I went along with that at first until deductive reasoning proved otherwise. Here's what I've learned. Analog bathroom scales are Devil-made. Digital scales are made by near-anorexic 19-year-old boys who cannot gain an ounce no matter how much pizza they stuff into their mouths because their mothers have had them on ADD drugs since they were three-days-old. A known side effect of ADD drugs is severe loss of appetite sometimes resulting in anorexia, particularly in boys, so in order to retaliate against the world for their own lack of mass, they build cruel inconsistencies into digital scales to torture those of us who cannot keep ourselves off them.

Both Pigassus and I have nobly posted about our Monday weigh-ins. The truth is much darker. We weigh in Monday when we awaken at 6 a.m. to visit the bathroom, at 7 a.m. when we awaken for real, at 7:01 a.m. to make sure the damned digital scale really knew what it was talking about; about 7:04 a.m. to really, really make sure; at 7:17 a.m. after we have managed through brain-busting effort to squeeze out another three drops of urine, certain it will change the number; at 7:23 to...well, you get the picture. And that's just on Monday morning. The same thing happens over and over all day long every day of the week.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Lest you be entertaining any naughty ideas about my friend Pigassus and I weighing in naked together each morning, let me reveal he lives about 200 miles away and I am old enough to be his mother...in some cultures, even his grandmother, so fantasize about something else. Perhaps a hot fudge sundae? END OF NOTE.

Now don't go calling in the head docs to treat our mutual obsessive-compulsive disorders just yet. Neither of us have OCD, what we have are evil, lying, taunting digital scales that have trained us to weigh ourselves over and over and over again within the space of minutes, because the digital numbers change radically within minutes. So it's the scales' fault, not ours. Oh, and those vengeful, anorexic scale designers who are jealous of the glorious flow of our excess avoirdupois.

Here's exactly what happened to me this morning, ounce by ounce. I awakened at 5:56 to visit the head, did my business and stepped on the digital scale. Odd time of the morning to weigh yourself, you might be thinking. But bitter experience has taught me that for whatever reason, it's the time of the morning I weigh the least. But not today. The scale said I weighed 204.8 pounds, a rather large overnight gain for no discernible reason.

Yesterday I weighed 202.4 pounds. Because I was very busy work-wise, I didn't eat much...a carefully measured bowl of raisin bran and a small glass of orange juice for breakfast, four crackers with Boursin cheese for lunch, and four paper thin slices of provolone with four paper thin slices of Genoa Hard Sausage (the natural kind, made with no nitrates), along with 3 stuffed grape leaves and 2 dried apricot halves for dinner. Only water to drink other than the orange juice at breakfast. By the numbers, about a twelve hundred calorie day, perfectly disciplined. So I would have thought that this morning I would at least weight the same or maybe even, slightly less.

Wrong! the evil scale sneered.

Yes, I didn't walk yesterday, and no, I never did quite get around to unwrapping an exercise tape and sticking it in the DVD, but still, there were no honking gobs of ice cream slathered with butterscotch sauce on my menu yesterday; none of the freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies that just seem to keep magically leaping out of my oven, and no potato chips or anything like that because I actually don't like them all that much. I mean, if I'm going to waste calories, it's going to be on something sublime and ambrosial, not some Frankenfood from Dr. Nutowski's chem lab. So I thought, "At least I maintained, right?"

Wrong again.

There was no getting around it. The evil digital scale said I weighed 204.8 pounds, but I sure wasn't going to put that in my weight log until I figured out if it was the truth. I dragged myself back into bed, full of sorrow, and worried about how much weight I would gain over the next hour or so of sleep. But I must not have been that worried, because I promptly dozed off.

When I woke up for the day, I immediately repeated my routine, fully expecting to weigh even more because that's what usually happens. But the scale said I weighed 202.8 pounds, still more than yesterday, but a full two pounds less than 90 minutes earlier. It was just a .4 pound gain over yesterday...disappointing, but manageable. But it was also weird, because I usually weigh about a pound more on my wide awake weigh-in than on my early morning bathroom break weigh-in. So I was happy and decided to accept the number. I scratched my head and grinned like an idiot child at the bathroom wall. I must have done some pretty heavy breathing during that last cat nap and exhaled a lot of carbon gases to achieve that result.

I was walking from the bathroom, putting my jammies back on, when I realized I hadn't pressed the little personalized button on my digital sale that also gives me my body fat, hydration and muscle mass measurements, so I stripped off my jammies, turned and walked back to the scale, arriving there exactly 7 nanoseconds after leaving. Yet in that brief window of time, according to the scale, I had gained one full pound and now weighed 203.8 pounds. I weighed again. 203.8 pounds. Damned scales!

Now do you understand why I don't trust digital scales? I walked back out of the bathroom to my desk, burned up all of two calories checking my email and walked back into the bathroom. Using a very tentative toe, I thumped the top of the digital scale to activate its evil, leering blue eye. Then I tapped the P-1 button, for "Person One," (even though at this weight I might possibly qualify to be two persons...) uttered a quiet threat: I double dog dare you to lie to me again...and the scale said...I weighed 202.0 pounds even.

Sold to the lady in the third row!

I rushed back to my computer weight log and duly recorded my true weight. And as for being obsessed with the scale, you can bet I won't be going anywhere near it for the rest of the day. I have my truth, the truth I like, and any additional instances of scale-baiting will have to wait until the damned thing lies to me again tomorrow morning.

Fat Cat