Sunday, October 30, 2005

My scale is messing with my head

I bought a scale.  A digital one.

I've never bothered with a scale before.  Controlling my weight has pretty much always been a matter of "hey, my clothes feel a little tight; I'll lay off the french fries this week."

Yeah, well, that one caught up with me a few years ago.  (And this medication I'm on with the side effect of "increases appetite, especially for sweets" hasn't exactly helped matters.)

I've mentioned this before, particularly for the effect it has on my clothes shopping.  But, I decided to be a good little girl and actually buy a scale. 

I've had it for maybe a month now and I'm fairly certain it is playing mind games with me.

When I first got the scale, my weight was ... let's just say it was a nice round number with 4 at the end.  So for the purposes of our discussion, I weighed, y'know "4."

Between the time I got the scale and now, my weight has fluctuated between 4 and 8 (and sometimes 10).  And when I say "fluctuated," what I really mean is "changed around with no reason whatsoever."

Example.  I wake up in the morning.  I urinate.  I know you don't really care about my bodily functions and all, but what I'm trying to say here is that I eliminated any excess water weight.  I step on the scale.  The scale says:  6.

I shower.  I get out of the shower.  I dry myself off.  My hair is still wet (water weight) and wrapped in a towel (towel weight).  I step on the scale.  The scale says:  4.

"Wow," I think, "I must have washed over 2 pounds of dirt."  Who knew?

I come over to the computer.  I sit at the computer desk (which may be responsible for rearranging the weight around my person, but doesn't involve any addition or subtraction of substances that may affect the total poundage).  I play on the computer for about ten minutes.

Back to the scale, I take the towel off my (still wet) head.  I step on the scale.  The scale says:  6. 

I gained two pounds (plus whatever the towel weighed) by sitting here at the computer for ten minutes?  Can't be.

I go back to the computer for another ten minutes.  Hair dries a bit more during this time.

Return to the bathroom to get ready for work, but curiosity gets the better of me and I step on the scale again.  The scale says:  7.

Aargh!

Or what about the time when I stepped on the scale before urinating -- and it said 10 -- and again right after and it said 5.  Five pounds difference!  Look, I know I may pee quite a bit, but there is no way I peed out more than a half gallon of water in a single sitting.  That would have to be some sort of record.  (I checked with the Guinness people, but apparently they don't keep track of such things.)

It isn't all bad.  One of the few times it dropped me back down to 4 was the morning after I ate a huge piece of apple pie (with ice cream) for dinner the previous night.  (Which only served to confirm my opinion that apple pie is good for you.  Because, y'know, it's got apples in it.)

Well, it was 4 again this morning.  And I had very little to eat today and even got a reasonable amount of exercise, so -- with any luck -- it'll finally break that elusive "4" barrier tomorrow morning. 

I swear, if that damn thing says 8, I'm throwing it against the wall.  And going back to french fries.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pardon my French, but digital scales SUCK!!  You can stand on one, get a 4, step off, step back on and get an 8.  Try it.  They just are not worth the money.
~~Kath~~
PS Go for fries.

Anonymous said...

Dahlink, unless you paid an obscene amount of money for that scale, the level of accuracy wll never be better than 4% -- if that. Many will have a difficult time maintaining a margin of error of less than 6%. Getting spring scales any more accurate requires a level of precision so expensive it is reserved for scientific processes. Get a nice quality, used, beam scale and have it checked by a weights and measures tech for accuracy AFTER it is set up in your home. Then never, ever move it. Ever.

Better yet, go back to the FF method and remember that they're about the worst possible thing for you to be eating ... so never eat more than one. Ever. :D

wil

Anonymous said...

I know nothing whatsoever about digital scales, but I do know something about scales messing with ones head.  I'll repeat the advice of the other's ... go back to the FF's  Pennie