Drawn To Scale

The scale in our bathroom decided to retire from measuring body fat, so it was fired. Yesterday I headed out to Bed, Bath & Beyond where all manner of scale options were on display. For $60 I could get one that measured body fat, muscle mass %, bone mass %, water % and calories needed to maintain weight. For $100 I could get one that was also entirely made of glass and gave tax advice. Since I already by TurboTax, I went with the discount model.

I enthusiastically ripped it out of the package and positioned the Homedics SC-540B in the corner of the bathroom, stripped down to nothing and planted myself on top. Actually, somewhere in there I also inserted the AAA batteries and entered my height, weight, age and gender into slot #1 (it stores up to 12, which is not only insurance in case one of us develops schizophrenia, but should be of great comfort to our ten house guests without beds). There was one other piece of information. Am I "Normal" or "Athletic"? Why that matters I don't know exactly, maybe to hide the effects of performance enhancing drugs? Initially I was psyched to see a body fat % reading in the 13's. Then I reviewed the manual and learned that their definition of "athletic" was for those "elite" who exercised for at least two hours a day, three days a week. Figuring that "elite" athletes don't write excited blog posts about being able to touch a basketball rim, I demoted myself to "normal," and was sort-of pleased to see that its results were consistent with the previous scale.

The manual also had some tables of normal ranges for various statistics. A male with my body fat percentage should have about 40% of his mass from muscle. Mine was... 20%. Now 20% of 150 pounds is 30 pounds. So in order to meet the manual's charts, I'd need to put on about 30 more pounds of muscle on me. To do that, I'd probably have to work out at least two hours a day, three days a week... which would make me "athletic"... hmmm. Pardon me while I do a little research on performance enhancing drugs.