For years now I’ve used a beat-up IKEA scale that I paid maybe $7 for. Recently I decided it would be nice to get a decent digital scale and I bought one at Costco. All was well at first. I make a habit of a daily weigh-in and have for years now, so I found it a little strange when I got on the scale one day last week and it said I had gained 10 pounds overnight. Literally! Overnight!
I just didn’t see how that was physically possible – I doubted I had consumed 10 pounds in food and drink since my last weigh-in, and I know what normal weight fluctuations from water retention, etc. look like. My clothes didn’t feel oddly tight or anything, so I was inclined to think the scale was broken. Still, I had a slight, nagging fear that maybe my weight was inexplicably shooting up and something was wrong with me.
I weighed myself on the scale over the next couple of days with strangely inconsistent results – my weight was always within 10 pounds or so of what I think I really weigh, but that was the only predictable thing about it. I was 5 pounds up, 5 pounds down – all over the place, sometimes within just a few minutes. Weighing myself was starting to become a bit of an obsession, actually.
Jared mentioned to me a couple of days ago that his no-sugar diet wasn’t working. “Really? Why do you say that?” I asked. “Well, I’ve gained 5 pounds since I stopped eating sugar.” I laughed. “No, you haven’t. Didn’t I tell you I think the scale is broken?” “It is?” “Sure. Either that or I gained 10 pounds OVERNIGHT one day last week.”
Just to confirm my theory, I weighed myself on my parents’ old, reliable, non-digital scale and it registered my usual, predictable weight. I’m not sure what is going on with the new scale. It got a little wet from shower spray, but it is a bathroom scale; aren’t they designed to weather such things? Could low batteries cause this problem? Right now I’m just avoiding it altogether.
I should have stuck with the IKEA scale all along.
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