book of joe pointed out this girth-measuring centimeter belt. It's perhaps indicative of how obsessed with weight-loss I've become over the last couple months that this seems like something I actually want to add to my wardrobe. Not for any bragging rights, you understand. I'm not a supermodel. The circumference of my spinal column isn't something I feel proud enough to broadcast. Maybe if this were a banana hammock... but I digress.

The point is that when I first started dieting and working out, the most important thing to me was seeing pounds tick off the scale. But as I got in better shape, I realized that the scale would wildly oscillate by as much as five pounds, sometimes. At this point, I realized that my goal wasn't some subjective numeric poundage, but a Jenny Craig pant size: an image of me doing a karate kick in skin-tight leather while holding a 'before' set of MC Hammer style parachute pants aloft for comparison. I wanted to know more than if I'd lost or gained weight: I wanted to know if I'd broadened or shrunk.

In truth, I wouldn't exactly wear this belt out to the gentleman's club. But putting it on every morning and seeing how much closer I was to my end goal waist size would make things easier. Of course, a tape measure properly wrapped around one's mid-riff does the same job, less swankily... making this belt just an expensive little trinket satisfying no real need whatsoever except to the braggartly vain or the person who needs to be chic even whilst aprising the girth of their belly fat in the toilet.

Waist measuring belt [Eat Nine Ghost via book of joe]