So you know that I have been to the doctor’s office this week, but what you may not know is that I have now been 4 times in less than a week for various other things.  I don’t know if you do this but I tend to group my appointments all at the same time.  So I have found myself sitting in the back area of the offices—not in a waiting room but not in an individual office either—getting a peek at other patients being oriented for their visits.  This includes watching other women getting “weighed in” for their visits.  This got me thinking…

We have various reactions to the number on the scale and depending on what’s going on in our lives it can change our reaction.  Here are some things that we do in response to the scale:

WEIGHING OURSELVES IN THE MORNING

If we get up in a good mood and we like how we feel, we’ll step on the scale.

At this point the scale is either going to agree with how we feel (i.e. give us a good number) and in that case we can get dressed and go to work with no hassle.  We may pick out something a bit on the body hugging side because—hey, the scale said we can.  So bright colors abound and difficult material like khaki on us somewhere, we’re living on the edge.  If the scale disagrees with what we were feeling (i.e. it’s mysteriously up 2 to 4 pounds without cause), we are now suddenly dressing for a funeral.  You can pretty much figure out when someone else has done this when they come into work wearing black pants, a black camisole covered by a black sweater and a pair of easy spirit type black shoes on.  Short of her singing an Amish hymn, you know something’s up.

If we get up in a bad mood and we hate how we feel, we’ll step on the scale.

Why do we do this?  To punish ourselves, of course.  So if the scale disagrees with us and is actually down a pound or two we have 1 of 2 reactions:  a) we’ll think that’s bull crap because we know we look like junk so now all of a sudden the scale is not an accurate litmus wheras the day before we were using it to validate life on Mars or b) we’ll accept it but find ourselves an hour later buying something we so don’t need to eat because we’re in a bad mood thinking to ourselves that ‘we have a pound to spare so who cares’.  No matter what, though, we hate how we feel so we cannot celebrate the number.  It’s lying.  But if the scale agrees with the way we are feeling and is up a pound or two, we are bringing the Wrath of Khan to work that day.  If we can unleash the Crackin’ we will.  If we could make it rain outside, we’d do whatever dance we could because now…heading into our closet, it’s not about funeral—it’s about frump!  If it is too big, baggy, ugly, plain, banned in modern civilization or found on the floor that morning—it’s going on.  Nothing can save this day other than winning the lottery or finding out something vindicating about someone else.  Other than that, the day is shot.

WEIGHING OURSELVES LATER IN THE DAY

This in and of itself is an anomaly so when it happens there’s always a reason:

• We are on a losing streak so essentially we want to brag to ourselves by seeing the number late in the day with our clothes on, after eating still be lower than whatever our litmus number was.
• We don’t want to know how much we really weigh so if we weigh ourselves during the day with our clothes on after eating all day, we know it is better than whatever that number was.
• We had a bad day and what better way to top it off than weigh ourselves midday so we can further dump on the day.
• We want to weigh ourselves in the morning and convince ourselves we lost X amount of pounds overnight because we didn’t eat something we passed on that day.

PUBLIC WEIGHING

Whether this is done in a doctor’s office or in the bathroom of your gym, the reaction is the thing we try to suppress:

ABSORPTION This is when there is no reaction to the number on the scale but there is slight delay in her movement.  Silently she just screamed and you were allowed to witness it.

MUTTERING She’s pissed but she can’t hide it although she’s not one to cut up in public.  So she just told that scale where to go in a not-so-aggressive sort of way.

SHOCK This is the girl who steps on and off the scale at least 4 times before coming back to the scale with a dumbbell of known weight to check the accuracy.  Trust me, after verification she’ll move on to MUTTERING or HATRED.

EXCITEMENT Much like shock but with less tension.  She’ll get on and off the scale more times than a cured ham at a deli counter just to make sure.  If she is really happy and totally self absorbed, she may have a friend hop on to verify who may be the opposite and head into SHOCK followed by MUTTERING.  That’s a good time to get out of the bathroom.

UNBELIEF Just like shock but is now followed by EXCITEMENT.  This may bring on HATRED (see below) if the girl in her naiveté says something dumb like, “And I’m not even trying.”  Or worse… “And after all that I ate this weekend.”  Run.  Get out fast.  Could be a brawl by the showers.

HATRED If this is in the doctor’s office, the patient will say she weighed herself that morning and tell the NP what it was in an abrupt tone.  This is a polite way of saying, “Bug off! You’re not messing up MY day.”  If this is in the gym, when the EXCITEMENT or UNBELIEF girl steps off the scale, this woman will come along and say that the scale reads low and she needs to add a few pounds to her reading to be accurate.  Nasty stuff right there.

What a nuisance that box is.  Have you done any of these?  I’ve done a few.  Let me know below!  More to come…  Woop woop!!

If you hang out with me for a week you are in for an adventure simply because my life is crazy and honestly, I love every minute of it. I have a good amount of people that I see during the week as well as those that I get to love all over through our online services and our bootcamp class. But having that eclectic of a week somehow puts me in the wildest situations that either provide a really good laugh or give me some material for the “odd fodder” of the week. This past week was no different although what I am about to mention happened to me and not to one of y’alls.

So glad this happened to me and not to you! 

Looks Like I Picked A Bad Week
…to step on the scale at my doctor’s office. Yes, you heard me. What’s with the doctor scales of the world? By habit alone I weigh myself every day. Unlike some of you crazy ladies, it doesn’t bother me what it says so I can get on it every day and read the number as if I was checking the weather. It fluctuates just the same as it does for you (please read that again—I feel as if that was a word to deliver some of you out of scale bondage every day so for me it’s just a matter of Que sera, sera. So I have a doctor’s appointment yesterday and the lovely nurse walked me down the Hall of Judgment to step on the scale. Automatically my mind begins to think about the setup. First, I am at a “woman’s” appointment. Need I say more? So that means the only clients that these folks have are women…why is the scale in the hallway? Again, this isn’t for me. My mind starts to think of all of you that I speak with every week. This is NOT a good setup. A man set this office up and then left it for women to run and they, feeling boxed in like a velvet rope, stuck with it because I can’t think of one of my clients who would want to step on a scale in a busy hallway that has a digital readout large enough for Stevie Wonder to see. Anybody hearing me on this one?

As nice as she was, the clipboard gave her true intentions away.

She motions for me to get on the scale and I realize that she has the same outfit on as the grim reaper. What is that about? Regardless, I hop on. Ladies, it read ten pounds more than it did 3 hours ago in my bathroom.

Yes. Ten. Pounds. More.

I didn’t say a word. I smiled at the nurse, checked the brand of the scale and made a mental note about it and then I looked up in time to catch the look of judgment from Ginny Reaper the nurse. Now was she really judging me? No. But that scale read ten pounds more than what I am and at THAT moment SOMETHING was judging me!

All I could think about is what that phone call would like…

“Hey girl, what’s up? How are you this week?”
No hi, no lead in, can hear heavy breathing on the phone.
“Jodi. The scale read ten pounds more at my doctor’s office than what I am at my house scale.” Voice is at an alarming pitch that within the pitch seems to scream, ‘You better pull the best trainer rhetoric you have stored in that creative mind of yours or I’m about to lose it in 3 languages.’
I try to interject, although at this time I am beginning to panic and I don’t even know why.
“Girl, what did I tell you about the scales in doctor’s offices? They always read at least 5 pounds mo—“
I get cut off by a shrill tone that now has escalated to a fever pitch which sounds like, ‘I’ve been waiting all week to sink my teeth into you , don’t tell me anything you told me before. I am no longer rational.’
“Yes, but Jodi”, oh I’m in trouble now, “it read ten pounds more. Not 5—10. How can that be?” You and I know that last question was not one that was to be answered because I would most likely try to open my mouth to speak and she’d just cut me off right then and continue on…
“Does that mean 5 of that is mine? Am I really up 5 pounds? That can’t be water. I don’t understand. Which one is right? How can 2 scales differ that much? Isn’t it a professional scale seeing as it’s in my doctor’s office? Isn’t that the most accurate? Have I weighed that much all along? I can’t go on vacation now/I can’t get married/I can’t go to work…now.” These statements are coming faster than the 5 pounds she gained from the home scale to the doctor’s scale. At this point I choose the easy way out and I gnaw off of a limb with a wild animal I found in my backyard, claimed medical emergency and told her I’d call her back after the limb was re-attached.

Out of my imagination and back to my doctor’s office…

Second, Ginny now leads me to the patient room where I am to now wait for the doctor to come.

By myself. After I have just been judged.

I suddenly realized that there were no sharp objects in the room anywhere. I don’t think that’s by accident. I half expect that they have a room somewhere in the office that when you open the door it goes to nowhere. It’s a cliff and every woman they just put on the scale of judgment heads over there some time during their appointment and hops off. I bet if I went into the basement of doom there would be a pile of women on top of each other, writhing in agony while screaming loud screams of torment about “10 pounds” and “how could it be?”

“Beautiful scene.  And below you will find a heap of women who jumped off after getting on the scale at their doctor’s office.  Don’t get too close to the edge.  Let’s move on folks, we have a tight schedule.”

I truly sat there thinking two things: 1) I have to write about this and I pray they see the humor in this and our behavior as women and 2) that’s not cool of my doctor’s office to be that out of whack for a scale measurement. Heck yeah I am sticking with their scale being wrong! Now granted, I was dressed when they weighed me and I had already eaten but I would have had to have been wearing a bear rug with the bear still in it for crying out loud to make the scale go up by 10 pounds! I am going to be so transparent right now and tell you that that did not bother me because of my weight, that bothered me because of the phone call I would have had to have because of that erroneous piece of metal on the floor! Seriously self centered on this one. But this really drives the point home that it’s just a number and we really cannot live our lives bound up by it.

 Don’t be fooled by this innocent face.  I have gotten some of my best ‘why does the scale read’ training from this fierce woman. 

So what did I do sitting in the office? Text the one person who could seriously feel the drama of the situation…Kas. Tuesday girl. Kas sent me back the best detached lawyer response ever, “Ok well, that’s a bit disconcerting. That really is enough to make you scream.” At first glance you may be thinking that that is a rational, calm response. I have known Kas long enough to know that the following thoughts were flowing through her mind (in no particular order):

What the…
Better you than me…
Right now I am up to my whazoo in tax crap, don’t put that stress on me…
Could that happen?…
Wait, she didn’t tell me which one was the right one…
I’d need some drugs to make it through that appointment…
I’d cry…
If she’s texting me, she must be upset…if Jodi’s upset I’d kill myself…wait, I can’t think about this now, I’m up to my whazoo in tax crap…but was she upset?…

Hahahahaha!! I love Kas. And I honestly do not know if she was really thinking this or not, but I know I’m close!

Ladies, get off the scale. Know it’s just a number. Enjoy your life. It’s too short to be bossed around by a box on the floor. I love you way too much to let that happen.  The email series starts today. You know where to find me. Peace.

You’re afraid of me aren’t you?  You want to ask me what I know but you’re afraid.

Go ahead…ask me what I think!  You know I’ll tell you!  And then for the rest of the day I could make you either happy or sad.  You decide–it doesn’t much matter to me.

Whether you are a business woman making 6 figures or a stay at home mom with beautiful cherubs, I have something to say and I know that you will listen.  I am just that good at what I do.

I may chastise you, praise you, give you validation or rob you of your joy.  My “critique” is heard by many.

You seek my knowledge every week as if what I think really matters.  Why you give me such power is beyond me but I’ll take it.  Sometimes you’ll seek me out every day or even twice per day.  Whatever.  I am always here and available so you can’t help but stalk me.

I’d love to say I care–but I don’t.  I can’t stop you from asking nor am I capable.  I just sit by and watch you perform your daily ritual of self doubt, self torture, self mockery…need I go on?

I just love days when you are tired of asking me and getting the same answer over and over, so you ask others just like me!  And then they tell you a different story!  Oh boy!  Now you’re really a hot mess!  Which one to believe? 

The best thing is…I can reduce you to a blubbering fool.  I am blown away by that power.  I can’t say I revel in it but I have to say it is an elixir for me.  Who wouldn’t want that kind of control over someone at least once in their lives?  I know you trust me…I’m the best at what I do…as if what I say is the truth and all–LOL…that’s kind of cool, too.  But I could be lying to you and you would never know because you take everything I say for face value.  Everybody else thinks my word is bond and for as long as you have known me, you have too. 

NICE! 

The worst thing about this responsibility you force me to bear is when you come to me confident, borderline cocky and I rip you to shreds.  I tell you all about yourself in less than a minute.  Of course, then I am left to deal with your anger, confusion, panic and etc.  Please!  Get it together.  I didn’t ask you to seek me out in the first place!  Don’t make me have to deal with that!  What’s that saying?  Don’t shoot the messenger!  I am not going to change how I deliver information to you just because it affects you so!  You are either going to have to learn how to deal or maybe you should stop seeking my opinion.

If you don’t like what I have to say, then get off my back!  There are plenty others out there who want to hear what i have to say…

With lots of taunting and jeering,

Your Bathroom Scale