Death and Rebirth (sort of) of a Scale

Mirabilis

I knew that Taylor, my more or less faithful scale, was in trouble when it told me I lost 9 pounds overnight. That was two sleeps ago. The following morning, it told me I reached my goal weight of 145.4 (intermediate) and then promptly expired into "Err" mode. I did a little happy dance over having reached my goal weight overnight, but honestly, it wasn't real and more a flight of imagination. Deep inside, I didn't think it was quite possible to lose 30 lbs. overnight.

So yesterday, I went out and got a new superduper scale that I got on sale and still likely paid far too much for, but on the basis that it weighs in 0.1 lb increments instead of 0.2 lb and that it'll weigh up to 400 lbs so that the husband will be encouraged to use it.

This thing's called the Weight Watcher's Scale by Conair (looks like a paid endorsement to me, but whatever), Model WW87C. The C stands for Canada, I expect.

It also does *reads the manual* body fat weight in pounds and percentages, body water in percentages, and bone mass in percentages. It does all of this totally arcane stuff by running a very tiny electric current through your lower body. No, you can't feel it.

You have to set height, gender and age for each user, and there is an initial setup process.

The display is grey LCD which is kind of hard to read, so I won't be weighing myself in the dark anymore. That's the first complaint. The rest of it's kind of cool tho. This is what it told me:

Weight: 184.8
Body fat by weight: 68.6 lbs.
Body fat by percentage: 37.2% (higher than normal 31.1-36.0%) -- dividing 68.6/184.8 = 0.3712121212121212 so that works out
Body water by percentage: 45.8% (normal 45.0-60.0%)
Bone mass: 5.6% (normal 5.2-6.0%)

This part makes sense to me, but normal percentage of body fat being 26.1-31.0%, I'm having trouble figuring out what normal would be for me in that instance. It looks like 146.5 to 152.2, based on (weight less body fat by weight) x 1.261 and 1.31, respectively. Does that sound right? It's a bit higher than the basic range, not that I'm unhappy about that, and likely due to age.

The second complaint? It reads higher than my old one for weight. I'm hoping that this is because it's more accurate, but in the long run, I don't think it matters much so long as that number goes down at the end of the day.

Right now, it's telling me that my water percentage and bone mass percentage are dead normal and that my body fat is too high, quelle surprise.

On the old scale, I went from obese to overweight 5 lbs ago. On this new one, it still says my BMI is "too high" (obese), but teetering on the edge of "higher than normal" (overweight). Alright, whoever wrote the manual is sensitive to the feelings of dieters, I like that. It also suggests that I might be slightly on the low side of medium for frame.

So, although the 4.8 pound weight gain is disappointing, at least I know that it isn't me gaining it. I blame it on the scale

Edit: Now if I were a guy, this would have been about a motorcycle :laugh: