Linda Hall: Bathroom scales have one last chance to behave

Linda Hall, Assistant Editor, Hawke's Bay Today.

Right — I am heartily sick of middle age — or to be precise middle age spread.

One would think that middle age meant the middle of one's expected life span. Life expectancy for me, according to Stats NZ, is 83.4 years.

Therefore I should be well and truly over the middle age spread thing but no — life is never that simple is it?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary middle age is between 45 and 65. That really is just not fair. How many people live until they are 130?

Why can't the things that happen to you during middle age just stop at say 50. I think five years of discovering hair where it has never been, squinting even with glasses on, and realising that no matter how many times you walk or jog around the block, certain parts of your body just keep on "spreading" is quite enough.

I have never had scales in my bathroom. However, recently for some stupid reason I decided to buy some.

Well I do know the reason really. It was my clothes' fault. They just kept getting tighter and tighter even though I was still walking and going to the gym — now and then — and eating quite well, except for the sausage rolls now and then.

So I bought the stupid scales and there they sat in the bathroom.

I told myself I would only weigh myself once a week.

That didn't last for five minutes. Every day for a week I jumped on the scales. Nothing — exactly the same.

Then I got myself under control and started once a week. I actually stopped eating potato chips which is major for me because I wanted to see those damn scales move.

And they did. Slowly, very very slowly, the numbers changed. After seven weeks I had managed to lose an entire 1.8kg.

My clothes were fitting a bit better and I was feeling quite smug. Too smug.

Last Thursday the first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes was it's weigh day. I was looking forward to it as I only had 300g to lose to go down another number.
I leapt up — well when I say leapt, I got up as fast as a middle aged person can, stepped on the scales and thought I must be seeing things.

I got off, "tapped" the ugly things with my foot and stepped back on. There was no mistaking it — I was almost back to where I started.

I was not happy as I set off for a walk and told myself it was just a glitch. Surely. When I got back from my walk I gingerly stepped on them again.

This time I laughed. I managed to put on half a kilo during a 30 minute walk and was now just 200g shy of where I started all those weeks ago.

I thought about all the chippies I hadn't eaten, the sausage rolls, cakes and chocolate I had sacrificed. All for nothing.

That's when I finally realised why middle age goes on for so so long. By the time it's over we have given up on trying to stop the spread. Instead of saying "passed the lips and on to the hips", we say "Life's too short to drink bad wine" or "life's too short to not eat cake".

I'm not quite ready to throw caution to the wind and eat whatever I please just yet, but the scales have one last chance.

If they don't behave themselves tomorrow — out they go.

- Linda Hall is assistant editor of Hawke's Bay Today.