Reframing
I'd been telling myself I'd lost about a stone. Then I did the sum, and realised how much a number depends on the story you tell around it.
I weighed in at 14 st 11 lb. BMI 29.6.
That was after breakfast, and after the previous night’s takeaway. Normally that combination would put a dent in the number. This time it barely registered.
The same day I spent a good while fixing my bike. Proper physical work, enough to get a decent sweat on.
And I didn’t creak as badly as usual.
That’s the one I care about more. Not the BMI, not the number on the display. The bit where getting down, getting back up and getting on with it didn’t feel like quite the same event it used to.
Then the next morning I realised what the numbers actually meant.
I started at 16 st 10 lb. I’m now 14 st 11 lb. That’s 1 st 13 lb lost.
One pound short of two stone. About 12 kg.
In my head I’d been running a completely different sum: started around sixteen, nearly fifteen now, so I’ve lost about a stone. I’d rounded one end of the journey one way and the other end the other way, and between them I’d managed to hide nearly a stone.
Nothing about my body had changed overnight. Same scales, same weight, same bike. The only thing that changed was the sum.
Which is exactly why I don’t want to base this on the numbers alone.
They’re a good indicator. I weigh myself, I check the BMI, I do the sums, and this blog is full of them. But it’s very easy for a number to become just a number.
It moves with what I ate last night and how much water I’m holding. It flatters me when it lands on something round and deflates me when it doesn’t. “About a stone” and “one pound off two stone” are the same result, and they felt completely different. If the same weight can feel underwhelming or brilliant depending on how I do the arithmetic, then the number isn’t telling me the whole story. I’m telling it a story, and the number is just agreeing.
The bike doesn’t do that. Neither does getting up from a chair, or how much I creak when I do. Those don’t depend on how I round anything. It’s the reason I never set myself a target weight in the first place.
Numbers can tell me where I am. They’re not much use at telling me what it means.
Meanwhile the KitKat is still sitting on my desk. It has had nothing to say about any of this.