That's Life 1/1/2010

Dear That’s Life,

One evening while sitting around the dinner table my husband noticed some math flash cards, often used to challenge kids on their math skills. He decided to see how well our five-year-old son understands the concept of addition. He asked him, very slowly, “What is 3 + 2,” illustrating 3 and 2 with his fingers.

After pondering for a moment my five-year-old gleefully answered, “3 and 2 is Cartoon Network, and 3 and 3 is Nickelodeon.”

At least he’s a free thinker.

Gitel Leibler

Brooklyn

Dear That’s Life,

Anyone who has been on a weight loss program knows the anxiety that surrounds the moment you weigh in. For many of us, the weigh-in comes with a particular ritual: the act of finding the lightest set of clothing in which to be weighed.

It amounts to changing your clothes again and again until you find the outfit that does not significantly change your weight, so that when the moment of truth comes, your clothing has not tipped the scales against you. A diet counselor once told me about a client who stripped down to his boxers each time he had to step on the scale. That may be a little extreme but who am I to judge?

It doesn’t matter if the outfit matches or if you look like you got dressed in the dark so long as it doesn’t make you significantly heavier.  And yes, you could just wear the same outfit each week but with the change in the weather, it isn’t always an option. The t-shirt, cotton bottoms and flip-flops don’t work when there is snow on the ground. So, the changing of the clothing continues.

Someone recently asked me if I stay for the meetings after I weigh-in and I said I didn’t. I am a completely self-motivated person. I have a whole bunch of skinny clothes in my closet that stare at me, wondering when they are going to be worn again. Silently, I know they’re judging me with their eyes. This person, however, felt differently.  “I need someone to clap for me,” she said. “Yay for you! You lost 10 pounds!”

Keeping up with my exercise, I recently tried out my friend’s Wii Fit.  It’s pretty cool, I must say, and anyone who has memories of Atari or a Commodore 64 will know in an instant that this is not your father’s video game. The Wii Fit balance board takes your measurements and based on your height, weight and date of birth, it calculates your BMI (body mass index) and gives you your ‘Wii Fit age.’ When the computer finished my calculations, I was informed that my Wii Fit Age is 52. Disheartening does not capture the moment when someone tells you you’ve just lost 20 years of your life and you’re in really bad shape. Gee. Thanks for the ego boost.

I tried a bunch of balance activities and did really poorly. I never knew I was this uncoordinated. At the end of each game, the computer gives you a score and a ranking.  Mid-workout, my husband called to see how it was going.  “The Wii Fit keeps telling me I’m ‘imbalanced,” I told him.  “And you needed a computer to tell you that?” he asked.  Har, har har.

The inside of my car looks like a Weight Watchers snack burial ground, with wrappers strewn all over the place.  Leaving behind the evidence, I went for my weigh-in, wearing my lightest weather-appropriate outfit. “You lost a little over two pounds,” she said. “And you get a sticker for losing over five pounds!” It may sound funny, but that sticker made me smile. ‘Yay me!’ I thought. I didn’t need the applause but something about that sticker was perfect.   Now I know how my kids feel.

MLW