How my wife one day broke the weight barrier

Now I have been married close to 15 years. So I know the answer to this really, really, very dangerous question which if not properly addressed, few marriages survive the answer.

Q: Honey am I fat?
A: Of course not. You are as slim as the day I met you (remember opposite of fat is not thin, it is slim)

Now unlike other hubbies, I really do not need to resort to this lie. No really, I mean it. I have not hypnotized myself into believing my own answer to a point where I ignore reality. My wife really has not put on weight in the past 15 years. But you could say that if the spouse were 300lbs to start with, there is not much more to gain. As you will see shortly this is not the case.

Anyway it came as a surprise one day a few months when she came crying to me

"Raag, I am fat, I just broke the weight barrier".

She then added how she had been binge eating and was unable to stop. I did not really hear much past the word "broke" as I rushed to the bathroom where we kept the weighing machine and was relieved to see that everything looked fine.

Since I am used to getting the latest update on my wife's weight every week, I knew what my wife weighed to within a pound or so. So I asked her what was her latest weight wondering if she had secretly gained 20 pounds or so which she could really be hiding under loose fitting clothes.

My wife sobbed "119lbs"!!

For those of you on metric system it is 54Kg. Now by no stretch of imagination could 119lb be considered fat unless one is under 4 feet and my wife stood 5ft 3in in stockings!! Besides this was also very much in the range of her weight since our marriage except when she was encumbered by two pregnancies.

But as I told you I am a pro and knew several ways to address this issue. So I started by simply blaming the poor machine by telling her how really these weighing machines are retail machines calibrated with as much as 5% error. Being technical helps. Being able to talk confidently about statistics, errors in measurement, etc makes it plausible.

I also asked her what she weighed the last time and prompt came the reply 117lbs. It did not seem so bad, but I knew better than to tell her that. So I casually asked her if she humor me by checking her weight again for my benefit.

Imagine my surprise and her shock when the machine stubbornly showed 116lbs!!

My wife no longer likes to talk about her weight problem with me.