Why Do Numbers Matter So Much?

A year or two ago we bought one of those Tanita scales, one that does weight but also body fat %. You plug in upfront your height, age, gender and choice of 3 activity levels. I've frankly been ashamed by its readings. You see, it's always told me my body fat % is somewhere on the border of “acceptable” and “unhealthy/obese”. Now, the weight it reflects isn’t great, and I know I’d be fitter and happier if I dropped 10lbs. I’d be a machine if I lost 15 or 20. But even on my worst PMS days, I know I’m not obese. But, that bodyfat % on the scale is still humiliating. Not exactly conducive to a good self image.

Anyway, a few weeks ago it started acting up and then the battery died. We didn't replace it for a week or two, and once we did Stuart starts freaking out. It's telling him his bodyfat percentage is in the high 20%s. As someone who typically has about 8% bodyfat, he is super upset. "Look, I've been injured for a few weeks and I'm ballooning into an unhealthy couch potato. This is horrible. My life is over." I assure him that's not the case and to ignore the scale since clearly something is wrong with it. Instead, like a good engineer, he begins to tinker with it. Turns out that when he put the batteries in, it reset his activity level down to moderate instead of active. He fixes it and boom, it's back on track. Then he notices that mine is on moderate and he was like "really? your'e actually pretty active". So he adjusts mine and my body fat percentage drops almost 50% when I next step on the scale! According to this scale, I've gone from borderline obese levels of fat to being in the "healthy range for athletes".

It's amazing. My weight hasn't changed, but in the last 48hrs my level of disgust when I look in the mirror has dropped dramatically. Pathetic, isn't it? While I personally think that the real percentage is somewhere between healthy athlete and obese, I’m still astonished at myself that one little number has so profoundly impacted my view of myself. Why do random numbers matter so much? Am I truly any more or less fit than I was yesterday? No. Do my clothes fit any looser or tighter? Nope. And does Stuart love me any more or less because of a number on the scale that I wouldn’t even let him see? Of course not. But are my shoulders more square, is my head held higher because a battery-operated machine sitting in my bathroom has evaluated me as more worthy? Yes. And damn it, I HATE that. It’s ridiculous. The scale is there, so I can’t not step on it. After all, I am working to be more fit, and that scale is one method of evaluating that progress.

At the same time, letting it define me is frightening. It’s the “Girl Box” that Girls on the Run founder Molly Barker talks about. Letting our standards be set by those around us. Evaluating our own value based not on our own perceptions of ourselves, but by the arbitrary capriciousness of society or even a malfunctioning electronic gadget. 2009 is challenging me already in a multitude of ways. Understanding how I came to be controlled by numbers is going to be one more thing to wrestle with, confront and hopefully overcome in one way or another.