Assessing a losing situation

Husband-and-wife journalists Bob Miller and Callie Clark Miller use this space to offer their views on everyday issues.

HE SAID: I don't know exactly at what point I looked in the mirror and told myself enough is enough, or exactly at what point my cute and talented wife agreed with me, but sometime late last year, I put my foot down (with Callie's permission, of course) and came to this conclusion: I needed to go back to the gym. And I needed to go on a diet.

So I scraped up enough money for a gym membership, and earlier this week I found my grumpy, oversized butt in a small office slightly before 8 a.m. I was there to get what they call an assessment. What a humbling experience. I learned three things:

1.) Next time, take the OTHER body fat test

2.) My high school football jersey number is no longer my favorite number.

3.) Lifting your shoulder blades off the floor isn't as easy as it sounds.

Before I get into the experience, I'll share some quick background. When I met Callie I weighed about 50 pounds less than I do now. I was 170 then. I was running three miles a day, lifting weights three days a week, playing basketball during the winter, softball in the summer. She and I have had many discussions and arguments -- including one in this space -- about who is to blame for my ballooning. She takes no responsibility. I say she's responsible for at least 15 pounds, since she cooks most of what I eat, and is a big reason why I stopped going to the gym in the first place.

Regardless, the young man who did my assessment didn't know, or likely care, about any of that. The worst part was the body fat test. He gave me a choice between two tests, and I told him I didn't have a preference. So he chose the one that required him to use a small salad-tong-like device to measure my blubber. Apparently, they can only test you in three spots: Your bellybutton, the side of your pectoral muscle and your inner thigh. First, my new trainer friend had to squeeze my skin between his fingers. Then he measured the skin, er, relaxed muscle, with the salad contraption. There's nothing quite as humiliating as a fat man subjecting himself to another man squeezing his skin in areas nobody's fingers should be squeezing, mine included.

All this to find out to what extent I'm fat. (By the way, Mr. Trainer Guy, I'm sorry you had to do that.) It turns out my body fat index is also my old high school football number. If I was a quarterback, and not a running back, that wouldn't have been so bad. The next test I had to do was a push-up test, which didn't go as badly as it could have -- I think I did 30 before having to stop. But the sit-up test was awful. Mr. Trainer Guy said I needed to see how many sit-ups I could do in a minute.

"You can do a full sit-up or crunches," he said. "As long as you get your shoulder blades off the ground."

Well, that didn't sound too bad, getting my shoulder blades off the ground. When I met Callie, I could probably do 60-plus sit-ups in a minute. I could've done even more crunches. By the 50th second (thir-ty ugggh one, thirrrrrr-ty, ughhh, two), my face felt like it was going to explode, my shoulder blades felt like boat anchors, and my oversized and underworked abs felt like a series fleshy Slinky toys that had been pulled too far. It was there, lying on the floor like a belly-up sunbathing walrus, that I realized how far I let myself slip.

Boy, do I have a lot of work to do.

SHE SAID: Soooo ... Bob's getting skinnier (he's already lost about 13 pounds) and I am getting fatter. True, the pregnancy is a handy excuse but unless I'm having a 40-pound baby I suspect my weight gain may be out of hand. My last visit with the doctor went something like this:

ME (after stepping on the scale and gasping in shock at the glaring red digits): So, errr, are you at all concerned about my weight gain?

DOCTOR: Well, let's see. Normal weight gain for your stage of pregnancy is about 14 pounds. And so far, you've only gained (pausing to thumb through my chart) ... um, 25 pounds. Well.

As a consolation, he told me he once had a patient who gained 100 pounds during her pregnancy. "That's like a whole other person," he said. Whew. What a relief. I'm only going to gain about 1/2 a whole other person. See, the problem is, I've discovered these great cheddar cheeseburgers at a local restaurant. I've been dragging Bob there about twice a week for the past month to eat these greasy, monstrous slabs of beef (and the fries are delicious too). Seriously, our server actually recognized us this week and asked if I would be having my usual double chocolate fudge cake as well.

Bob, being on a diet, asked to see the nutrition information for the menu. I made the mistake of looking up my wonderful burger. "Hey look, hon," I said. "You were wrong. This thing doesn't have 2,000 calories after all. Only 1,063!" I must admit, the information and my traitorous home weight scale has sort of curbed my appetite for that particular meal.

I've weighed the same -- give or take a pound or two -- since I was 15. Over the past two weeks, person after person has walked up to me and said, "So, you finally look pregnant I see!" I never know how to respond to that. Um, thank you?

You know there's a problem when your maternity pants start to get tight.

Bob Miller is the Southeast Missourian managing editor. Callie Clark Miller has given up defining herself as anything but an ever-expanding balloon. A cheeseburger-and-chocolate-cake-lovin' balloon. Reach them at bmiller@semissourian.com and cmiller@semissourian.com.