Scaling Down

I did it today. I finally broke down and bought myself a scale. I need to be able to keep track of what’s going on with my weight, maybe if I’d been doing that all along I wouldn’t have rebounded back to my starting weight so easily. Also, I realized I can’t rely on my mom’s scale because hers only tracks effectively up to 250 lbs. That would explain why it measures me as rather jarringly weighing ten or twelve pounds heavier or lighter in a twenty-four hour period.

So I did a little research online, chose my weapon, went to Bed Bath & Beyond this morning and picked it up – pretty simple and painless as my shopping experiences go. I chose the “Homedics Body Mass Index HealthStation” which retails at BB&B for forty bucks. With a 10% coupon I brought it home for about thirty-three… sweet!

It measures your weight, then calculates your body mass index based on height, age and gender and figures out what your calorie intake probably is (or was) to achieve the weight that you currently are. It also weighs effectively up to 400 lbs. Not that I need it to thankyouverymuch.

The box is decorated with an obnoxiously smiley, healthy looking guy and proudly displays his perfect BMI of 23.2 so right away, I wanted to kill him.

Set up was pretty easy; it’s got slots for four users and very few buttons so it doesn’t take much to select User 1, punch in my height, weight and age and then step on for the weighing. Since it needs a flat, hard surface to work correctly I hid it away on the hardwood floor in my back bedroom like a dirty little secret. Nice thing is it’s a perfect spot in my house to get naked before I have to confront the thing.

As of today, I’m 271 lbs. with a BMI of 42.6 – pretty depressing. But at least the scale didn’t start whooping an alarm at me and screaming “Morbidly Obese!” “Morbidly Obese!” Actually it didn’t classify me as “Morbid” at all, just “Overweight” – so I guess it could be worse. And yes, those are my feet.

I set up Ted as user two and showed him how to use it, since he’d like to loose a few pounds as well.

Overall I’m pretty happy with my purchase. Ted classified it as another tool in my tool kit or weapon in my arsenal – then he offered me one of the Pretzel Bites he’d picked up around the corner at the Pretzel Factory.

*sigh*

We’re both still learning.