The measure of the girl. Damn and damn and damn. One Half Pound! A whole week of calorie counting and treadmilling and crunches and mule kicks and going to sleep hungry and the scale says One Half Pound! Okay. I mean, I am not scale-obsessed and I’m feeling really great these days — I did a 50 minute walk-run yesterday — and the clothes are fitting better … and I know everything is working. Still, I find myself sitting on the bench in the gym locker room thinking wistfully of how nice it is to have that oh-so-definite, cleanly quantified, neatly numerical mark of success when the scale bobbles, then settles on that new, smaller number.

I sit there, looking at my feet, feeling cheated. Of course, I brought this on myself. I knew that I should start the “program” not only by weighing in — so I could track my success in pounds — but also by taking my measurements — so I could track my success in inches. I knew it … but a fat girl hates the measuring tape only slightly less than the ultra-icky calpiers. Because the tape that will eventually tell you how well you are doing, first has to tell you just exactly how big your butt is. Sigh. Plus, to get the best measurements, you need someone to do the measuring for you, while you stand “naturally.” So someone else actually has to witness the exact size of your butt. Laurie’s been drafted. Husband Val doesn’t need an exact number permanently seared in his memory.

• • •

I’m getting measured tomorrow — so, to help me remember the places to measure, I go rooting around in my old workout binder and find my trainer’s chart tracking my measurements back in ‘96 when I fought my way down to 128 pounds of muscle. It took 18 months, and my trainer took my measurements every two or three weeks. The old chart showed that, even when the weight loss occasionally seemed stalled, the measurements proved that fat loss and muscle building was still going on. There it was — that lovely countable, chartable proof of success — and all I have to do to get it today, is to endure that first awful accurate moment of measurement. The truth will set me free. It will hit me on the head with a frying pan, and then it will set me free. But eventually, I will be free. Yeah.

So be it. Because nothing succeeds like success, I will stand (naturally) and let Laurie log my measurements. Laurie has already taken her Oath of Secrecy and I will be glad in the months to come, when I need to be reminded that it’s all still working.

Ready to bite the bullet and start a measurements chart of your own? You can find the instructions and tips at workoutsforwomen.com’s Tale of the Tape.