The Postscript: The scale

“It’s not what you eat between Christmas and New Year’s that counts, it’s what you eat between New Year’s and Christmas.”

I’ve had this mantra in my head because my husband, Peter, and I have been trying to keep our weight in check. Peter is doing it for sensible reasons. His cholesterol and blood pressure have been high. He worries he might be at risk for a stroke. Peter was a skinny kid, a skinny teenager and a skinny adult. Discovering in his 60s that he was, in fact, capable of gaining weight came as a great surprise — and disappointment.

In response, Peter has been terrifically disciplined and has avoided sweets for more than two months. He has gotten a lot slimmer. I have gotten slimmer, too. But I have no sensible protocol. I just skip meals. I have low cholesterol and low blood pressure, but it really irks me when my clothes don’t fit, and I found a lot of them didn’t. So Peter and I both went on our individual versions of a diet.

Peter’s sensible portion control method is very slow and reliable. My method of “just don’t eat until I’m ready to fall over” is probably not as medically sound, but also works. We both lost a bit of weight, and we both feel better — Peter because of his blood pressure, me because of my vanity.

Peter and I share the same scale. He weighs himself first and, when I get up a bit later, I weigh myself. Sometimes we compare notes. Sometimes we commiserate. Just as I am waking, I hear Peter utter a sigh of semi-satisfaction, or mutter something dark about the fickleness of numbers, and I’ll know if he had a good or bad day with our mutual acquaintance, the scale.

But now is the season that everyone frets about, and there are going to be days when eating too much is pretty much inevitable.

“Oh, no,” I announced to Peter one morning after a particularly decadent dinner. “I don’t think I want to see the scale today!”

Peter replied, “Even the scale deserves a day off.”

We both glanced at our little digital nemesis with a mixture of emotions, none of them good. I thought leaving the poor thing alone sounded like wise advice. I like to think I took pity on the scale. It can’t be a very fun job having one grumpy person after another standing on you and grumbling — as if the perfectly accurate information you are relaying is somehow your fault.

And sometimes, a little denial can go a long way. I have found that my weight fluctuates wildly from one day to the next. I started weighing myself in kilograms for a while, just because the numbers represented larger chunks of weight. I couldn’t get worked up about a pound or two, but after a couple of kilograms, I thought it made sense to take notice.

In the U.K., many folks still use stones as a measurement of weight and, while I’m not a fan of getting too much information, this seems like taking it a little too far. A stone is equal to 14 pounds. Ignoring the situation until I had added on the equivalent of a retaining wall seems like more deliberate denial than even I could manage.

But it is the season for big meals and cheese and crackers and cookies and rice pudding, and I honestly can’t see myself missing any of it. I know Peter will keep being disciplined and avoiding sweets.

I’m thinking avoiding the scale sounds easier.

Till next time,

Carrie

——

Carrie Classon is married to Havre native Peter Heimdahl. Her memoir, “Blue Yarn: A Memoir About Loss, Letting Go, & What Happens Next,” was published in 2019. Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.