I've been on a diet in one form or another since I entered my forties. So far I've lost 90 pounds. Unfortunately that isn't an aggregate
figure: it's the same 10 pounds nine times over. And I'm getting tired of it. I've been on the Adkins diet, the carb-addicts diet, the low-calorie diet, the low-fat diet, the Zone and something really, really awful
named for Dolly Parton. None of them have worked for me. Oh, don't get me wrong, I've lost weight. But as soon as I go off the diet, the weight goes back on. I still can't figure out how one itty bitty Mounds bar can
put so much jiggle in my caboose, but it does. The problem is the older I get the more fattening my food gets. These days even celery packs the pounds on.
And keeping track of those pounds is one of the worst parts
of dieting. The books say not to climb on the scales but once a week. Heck, I not only weigh myself every day when I'm on a diet, but sometimes two or three times daily. And I'm a consummate gameplayer when it comes to
dieting. This is a woman who takes her shoes off and doesn't eat breakfast before a weigh-in at the doctor's office. I know all the tricks.
Anyway, each and every morning -- in total and complete disregard for the
diet books I read -- I would weigh myself. My scale was calibrated to match the one in my doctor's office, only three pounds lighter. So I knew that every morning I had to strip down to the bare essentials and climb on
the scales, adding three pounds to whatever it read. If it looked kind of like it was between two numbers I always gave myself the benefit of the doubt and rounded down. Hey -- my scale, my weight, my prerogative.
Tired of the three-pound equation, I recently broke down and bought myself a nice, heavy duty new scale, one that wouldn't have to be adjusted each time. And, since I was in week two of a strict diet to which I had
religiously adhered, I was quite pleased with myself because I knew the scale was going to show a loss -- the mystery was just how much?
So I climbed on my new scale and weighed...eight pounds more than I did when I
started my diet. And this was stark naked and before breakfast. Heck, I hadn't even brushed my teeth out of fear the toothpaste might tip me over another pound. It's obviously a defective scale and, as soon as I can
find the receipt, I'm going to take it back for a refund. Then I'll pull out my perfectly good, under-by-three-pounds scale and use it. And it seems I'm not the only one in the newsroom with scale problems.
A friend
of mine recently confided that her scale weighs light by 13 pounds every other day and shows her heavier by four pounds on the opposite ones. I had to snort.....poor thing. Such a babe in the woods. She doesn't know how
to manipulate her scale yet, so I guess I'll have to educate her. All she has to do is weigh herself on the days the scale's under by 13 pounds and skip the other days.
Oh -- and do it barefoot, naked and before breakfast.
