Dear Kid,

Still having Fitbit issues.

As a fashion accessory, I love it. It’s chic, it’s purple, and it’s mine.

As a toy, it’s fantastic. I push the button and I get all sorts of data. Heaven.

As a tracker of calories, I’m pretty sure we have a colossal #Fail.

Lemme ‘splain.

I am what you might call “an active person.” For example, yesterday I did all sorts of physically active things.

I sat. I stood. I walked. I wandered. I showered. I sat some more. I baked. I ate. I drank. I watched TV. I ate some more. I walked the Puppy. I wrote. I read what I wrote. I read things I didn’t write. I cleaned (not really). I sorted. I tracked. I went to the gym. I worked out. I texted. I telephoned. I washed the Puppy. I glared. I growled. I grimaced. I grinned. I coffeed. I calculated. I computed.

In short, I used a lot of verbs.

According to my highly scientific assessment and calculations, I burned 4,827 calories yesterday. According to my Fitbit, I burned 62.

Just kidding. My Fitbit said I burned 1,628 calories.

Either way, do you see my problem? There is a HUGE discrepancy!

I prefer my methodology to Fitbit’s algorithm.

No, that’s not exactly true. I don’t really care which method we use. I just like my answer better.

According to my logic, I lost 8 pounds yesterday. According to my scale, I need to wear stretchy-waist pants.

Which means my scale and my Fitbit are in cahoots.

If those two little devices are collaborating, we are in really big trouble.

But being a generous kind of girl, I’m giving my Fitbit another chance.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

My scale and I are back on speaking terms.

You didn’t know we’d had a falling out? Let me tell you about my scale.

Regular scales wait until someone steps on them, then the scale calculates their weight. No personality, no taking liberties with facts, no diabolical plans.

Not so with my scale.

My scale is alive. It can’t move by itself, but it definitely has a mind of its own.

And it’s stubborn.

It can’t be coaxed into showing the weight I want to be. Which isn’t surprising, since most scales stick with reality rather than sharing my view of the world.

But my scale isn’t really interested in reality as much as it’s interested in messing with me.

My scale makes a daily decision before I get near it. During the night, the scale sits quietly thinking of ways to inflict its own personalized torture. Then it picks a number.

Not an entirely random number. It has never suggested I weigh 7,000 lbs. nor has it ever guessed 6 lbs. Pretty much everything in between is fair game.

Some days, it shows numbers relative close to what I expect to see. Other days, not so much. Let me tell you what happened two days ago.

I got on the scale and yelped. What? I gained 7 lbs. overnight? No way. Then I realized I was still holding a book. Ah. I put it down, reset the scale, and stepped back on. Same number.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

That book weighed about 17 lbs. It was enormous. It was practically dictionary sized (remind me to explain what a dictionary is). It was the weight of the first 5 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (I’ll explain that one too).

The scale smirked ‘That’s your number for today.’

I stepped off the scale, walked down the hall, snuck back in (changing my cadence so the scale wouldn’t know it was me), and stepped on. Same number.

‘Told you.’

See what I mean?

I decided to snub my scale. I turned my back and walked out. The scale smiled. It knew it had won.

Fortunately, today it shows I’ve lost half a pound, so we’re back on speaking terms.

You have suggestions. I know. I can hear you thinking them.

Your first suggestion is that I get another scale. Not going to happen right now. I know how this scale thinks; I don’t really want to train a new scale. The scale you know is better and all that.

Your second suggestion is that I refrain from weighing myself every day. You might as well suggest I wear ugly shoes every day. Not going to happen in this decade. In fact, the reason I like my current diet is because it requires me to weigh myself every day.

The big problem (yes, I know it’s a big problem) is that my scale has control over me. It’s true, it’s unhealthy, and I have no plans to change my attitude or belief system. (Anyone who wants to tell me not to judge myself by my scale needn’t bother. I don’t judge myself by the scale. I judge my weight by my scale and I believe my weight is important. Without weight, gravity would have nothing to hold on to. I would just like gravity to have a little less to hold on to.)

Love, Mom

P.S. Please don’t try to explain that gravity causes weight. This is a blog about my scale and for purposes of this discussion, Oreos cause weight, not gravity.

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Dear Kid,

My gym (well, it’s not mine, it’s the community’s). The gym I belong to has a wide range of people who come to work out. The fit, the not so fit, the Sponge Bob wannabe. The young, the ancient, the in-between (I fall into that category—you may refrain from comment). We also have a wide selection of college students.

I know they are college students because a) they look like college, b) they talk like college students, and c) some of them have told me they’re college students.

Not all of them speak English as their first language. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s easy enough to follow what’s going on.

Yesterday, two guys were doing shoulder presses. They did not sneer derisively at my ½ pound weights (I’m kidding—they did sneer). One was pressing 35 pound dumbbells (we’ll call him 35) and one was pressing 45 pound dumbbells (we’ll call him 45). 35 pressed, 45 spotted. Then they switched. Much Spanish after which 35 tried pressing the 45s (without much success). Switch. Then 35 went to retrieve the 35 pounders—much Spanish. Several significant looks. 35 came back carrying 40 pound dumbbells. “Peer pressure” he said in English. I didn’t need the translation.

Then there’s Look at Me Dude. He was also working shoulders, using 65 pound weights. For the record, they were too heavy which gave him the opportunity to grunt and groan and grimace and then to drop those suckers on the floor (shaking the entire building so everyone would look up to see what had happened and startling Yours Truly who’d been spending time between sets texting a certain remote college student).

Plank Girl is very thin, very athletic, and very unassuming. She doesn’t care if she’s near a mirror or not. She comes to work. Hard. She’s friends with the girl majoring in American Sign Language (we had a conversation a while ago). I’ve seen Plank Girl work out and she’s a machine. I’m convinced the only reason she changes position when she’s doing planks is boredom. Otherwise she’d still be there 6 hours later.

My Business is Your Business works out semi-regularly. And by “semi-regularly” I mean approximately 1/3 of the time he’s at the gym. The rest of the time is spent slapping other dudes on the back and shouting into his cell phone.

The Two Math Majors (actually I’m guessing they are grad students) sport matching wispy beards and discuss weird calculations as they work out. They have one muscle that they share.

I Love Me Dud (why are the I Love Mes at the gym so often men?) grabs a spot by the mirror and proceeds to do exercises designed to show (himself) every muscle. In case you weren’t sure, he accepts the hint and looks at himself. I’ve never seen him actually kiss his muscles, but it’s probably because he doesn’t like PDAs and kisses at home.

And then there is the small child in the locker room singing Do, a Dear at the top of her lungs. Well, singing 70% of it. “La, a needle is a thread!!!” Translation? Joy, pure joy.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I had a great day yesterday.

I renewed my driver’s license, and against all expectations it took only 12 minutes from the time I walked in the door until I had a new license (terrible photo—duh).

I went to the post office and in less than 2 minutes I was done. Very different than earlier in the week when half the population of Cincinnati was partying with the USPS.

And that’s how the entire day went.

So I thought about buying a lottery ticket.

I dug up some (not very surprising) facts about the lottery.

• You are more likely to be struck by lightning 5,000 times than win the lottery
• You are 146 times more likely to die in a fireworks accident
• You are 8,000 times more likely to be murdered

Here’s what I find particularly interesting. I’m more likely to be struck by lightning 5,000 (count ‘em, 5K with a comma) times than to win the lottery but only 146 times more likely to die in a fireworks accident.

Is there a fireworks-injury epidemic I don’t know about? How is it even possible that that many people get killed by fireworks? Are people eating fireworks or something?

(Does quick research.) According to MFTI (My Friend The Internet), there are four deaths per year from fireworks, and the most times anyone has ever been hit by lightning is 7 or 8.

Which, as far as I can tell, means I don’t have to worry about death from fireworks, overly fried hair from multiple lightning strikes, or winning the lottery.

Guess it was a good thing I didn’t buy a ticket. But I digress.

Back to yesterday.

Later in the day, I went to the gym. There was virtually no one at the gym, so I was able to use the machinery I wanted without waiting. And my FitRadio was playing great music with no load-time issues.

By working out I burned 225 calories. I celebrated by eating 7 servings of salmon and an entire cheesecake.

See what I mean about a great day?

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I’m not going to the gym today. My ligaments wanted a day off. You know how it goes. The tendons hear the ligaments have a day off and the next thing you know everyone is whining. In no time at all, only three eyelashes and my left ear were willing to work out, so I’m taking the day off.

Now you know.

It’s easy to decide to take a day off from the gym. As long as I get my little self back there tomorrow there really won’t be any consequences. One could argue that it will actually be good for me to take a day off. (Unfortunately, one would be in for a silly argument because it’s not like I train all that hard.)

There are other activities that are easy to take a break from. Like deciding not to go out to eat every weekend, or choosing not to have coffee every day (yeah, ok, that’s pretty funny), or  opting not to text during dinner. Other things have much bigger consequences. Like skipping work or deciding not to go to class because you don’t feel like it.

Sometimes, taking a day off is a honkin’ big mistake. Like skipping coffee when you are addicted to morning caffeine, skipping obligations can cause a pretty nasty headache.

When you don’t feel like going somewhere/doing something that you know you really have to do or get to, it can be hard to make yourself get moving. Snuggling under the covers for oh, just another 10 or 12 hours can seem like a mighty fine idea. And just once won’t hurt, right?

Except that it will. Maybe it will impact your paycheck. Maybe you’ll miss the key lecture that will make up 80% of the midterm. Maybe not being there will tarnish your reputation. Or something will happen that you could have prevented. Or something won’t happen that you could have started. There are always ripples.

And skipping a planned workout can lead to a second skipped workout. So if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have to go grab my gym bag. My ligaments need a Strong Talking To about where we’re going after work today.

Love, Mom