A guy asks his wife what she wants for Christmas and she says "something that goes from zero to sixty real fast." He finds himself in the dog house after he buys her a bathroom scale.
It was after hearing this joke and reading an article that people who own a scale are "much more likely to lose weight and keep it off" if they actually step on it, that I asked for one for Christmas. We haven't had one in the house for about 20 years after a seemingly minor encounter with my wife. I happened to step on the scale and was offended by it's report. When I went down stairs I mentioned to her that the scale had to be broken because it was giving me an erroneous number (on the high side). She said "nonsense, there is nothing wrong with that scale."
Later on I heard a muffled cry from upstairs and needless to say that scale was never seen nor heard from again. So here we are 20 years later and it is out of necessity that I welcome one back into castle.
The necessity is as a result of the food coma that I get into around this time of year. It starts at Thanksgiving and then over the next 45 days or so it is one food orgy after another culminating in some New Year's Eve resolution about having to slim down.
I looked back in my journal over the past few years and my resolution strangely enough is exactly the same. I weigh 208 and my goal is to get down to a svelte 190. I start off January 1 all full of resolve and determination but by the time I come full circle I am back to exactly the same weight I started at.
So this year I am trying something a little different. Instead of waiting for the new year I started the day after Christmas. Instead of hitting the gym and figuring I am making progresss I now have a little square box with numbers to verify what my progress is. The next change is no more weights at the gym. From now on it is going to be something that makes me breathe hard and break a sweat. I deduced that this might have some merit when I tried to follow a little bit of instruction from a Pilates for Dummies video that was gathering dust on my shelf. The instructress witch had me slumped over on the couch gasping for air after about 15 minutes.
I will try this method for now and see what result it brings. I am not quite desperate enough yet to actually consider eating less.
