I arrived at my doctor's appointment on the Monday morning after an indulgent Thanksgiving weekend and did exactly what you'd expect. I went to the restroom to urinate. I took off my shoes and my cardigan; I took my keys and phone out of my pockets. Only then did I step on the scale. I know, intellectually, that my weight tells only a very small part of the story of my health. I know that my BMI — a measurement arrived at by dividing one's weight by the square of one's height — is a wildly unreliable tool. It doesn't reveal my fitness, my muscle mass, my strength, or my cholesterol levels.
There's a pretty good chance you, too, have tried to remove a few ounces before a doctor's office weigh-in. The scale always seems to be a test, one in which the smaller the number, the better the score. Why are we still putting ourselves through this? And what if I told my doctor I didn't want to do it any more?
