I weigh HOW much???

All the people who know me personally such as family, friends, acquaintances, enemies (I'm sure I don't have any, but you never know . . .), know that I am really big. In fact, I am what doctors call morbidly obese, which is a fancy way of saying, "he's enormously big!" Over the years, I have tried various and sundry diets, some having better effect than others, but they all have ultimately been unsuccessful. Several years ago, at the urging of my doctor, I started considering what's known as Bariatric Surgery: the branch of surgical medicine that deals with the causes and prevention of obesity. After a year or so of investigations, I settled on having the Lap Band procedure. This is where a surgeon placed an adjustable band around my stomach in a laparoscopic procedure. I had this done in June of 2006, six months before I got married. The primary reason I settled on this procedure instead of the more common (at that time) gastric bypass is that I wasn't comfortable with the idea of having drastic changes made to my digestive plumbing. If there ever arose complications to the gastric bypass, I would have to live with them because gastric bypass is non-reversible. That is to say, it's a one-way trip; once done, there is no going back. Gastric banding, however, is reversible if necessary.

So, where is all this going? Well, when I moved here to England, I naturally came under the care of the National Health Service. Since I can't afford to fly back and forward to Georgia on a frequent basis, I had to find doctors here in the NHS system to take over the care and maintenance of my gastric band. One of the, um . . . features of the NHS is that all medical care that is not handled by one's GP is done through clinics at various hospitals, according to which hospital speciallizes in what fields of medicine. What this means is that I go to one hospital where they hold clinics for sleep disorders (mine is sleep apnea) and I go to another hospital where they speciallize in, amongst other things, weight management.

When I go to the weight management clinic, down at the Royal Sunderland Hospital, I have to weigh in before I consult with the dietician and the doctor who's pulling duty that particular day. As you might imagine, my weight is measured in kilograms. But when I come back home and my wife, Rebecca, asks me how much I weigh, she expects an answer in the English system of weights, that is to say, she wants to know how much I weigh in stone. When I tell my mother about my visit to the clinic, she wants to know how many pounds I weigh. That's three different measurement systems, all in one day! :-) To answer everyone's curiosity, after a setback in my program, I am now back on track to lose weight. I had regained weight during this setback. So, when the doctors readjusted my band to where it should have been, I weighed 170 kilograms. That translates into 26 stone, 10 pounds or 374 pounds. I told you I was big. :-) Since then, I have lost weight and now I weigh 164 kilograms, ne 361 pounds, ne 25 stone, 10 pounds.

So, what is a stone? Here in England, when one is talking about personal weight, a stone is equal to 14 pounds. Now the question is, why do the English use stone as a measurement of weight - I should point out here that they only use stone (the plural usage is the same as the singular, just like deer) when they are talking about a person's weight. When it comes to other weights, they use either pounds or kilograms . . . or at least, that's what I am told. It won't be the first time I was wrong about these things if I got this backwards. Back to the question, it took some digging to find the answer to this one. According to this website, it came about in this manner:

"In techniques for measuring weights, the Babylonians made important improvements upon the invention of the balance. Instead of just comparing the weights of two objects, they compared the weight of each object with a set of stones kept just for that purpose. In the ruins of their cities, archaeologists have found some of these stones finely shaped and polished. It is believed that these were the world's first weight standards.

The Babylonians used different stones for weighing different commodities. In modern English history, the same basis has been used for weight measurements. For the horseman, the "stone" weight was 14 pounds. In weighing wool the stone was 16 pounds. For the butcher and fishmonger, the stone was 8 pounds. The only legal stone weight in the imperial system was 14 pounds."

So I found out that it could be worse. If you follow the link above, you'll find the whole article and learn the rationale behind many of the methods of measurements we use today. Despite knowing this, that there is a rational explanation behind using stone as a unit of weight measurement, I still find it hard to do the mental arithmetic to change from one to the other or to even think in terms of stone. But then again, I didn't grow up using it. For my wife, it's as natural to think of weight in terms of stone and pounds as it is for me to think in terms of pounds alone. Interestingly enough, I have learned how to do the mathematical gymnastics for the conversion between pounds and kilograms; I simply divide pounds by 2.2 to get the equivalent in kilograms and conversely, multiply by 2.2 to convert kilograms to pounds. That's easy! But I either have to pull out some paper and do it by longhand or get a calculator to do the math to make the conversion between stone and pounds or stone and kilograms.

Now my American readers may be asking why do the English persist in using this somewhat clumsy method of measuring a person's weight. Probably for the very same reason that we Americans still insist upon using similarly clumsy methods of measure; inches divided by a multitude of fractions, 12 inches per foot, 3 feet per yard, 2000 pounds per ton, etc., etc.. It is what they are simply used to using. I am finding it more and more easy in this land of multiple measurement methods, to use the metric system. Having said that, there are some things I don't think will change. Even though I weigh 164 kilograms and stand 179 centimeters tall, I'll always think in terms of miles when I think of distance and speed. The more some things change, the more some things remain the same, I guess.

Despite the fact that the metric system was invented by the French, it is imminently logical and quite easy to use, once you get used to the new units. The arithmetic is so much easier to do! Instead of having to figure out how many yards, feet, inches and whatever fractions of an inch there are in the length of something, the metric system is decimalized. Everything is divisible by 10. It's a shame that the French can't be as logical or use as much common sense in their other activities. LOL