My driver’s license says I weigh 198 pounds.

It’s a lie.

I know, who doesn’t fudge a bit about their weight when it comes to telling the DMV clerk how much you weigh?

But in this case my weight is wrong because the clerk made a mistake.

I had to go into the DMV office in 2009 to get a new license as the law would no longer allow additional extensions for me by mail with getting a new mug shot.

I was pretty happy with myself as I was going to give my real weight for the first time since I got my first license in 1972. The license I had at the time had been issued in 1999. I told the clerk back then I weighed 198 pounds. I stretched the truth a bit. It was more like 222.

That’s why I was so pleased with myself when the clerk asked me in 2009 how much I weighed. I told her 170 pounds — exactly what I weighed that morning.

Imagine my chagrin when I got my new license in the mail and saw that the clerk had re-entered the old weight listed of 198 pounds.

What  I weigh is a big deal to me.

For the past 31 years I have done something the so-called experts say you shouldn’t do — I weigh myself every day. It is something I started doing when I stepped on the scale for the first time in years when I was 29 and the number 320 popped up — not once, not twice, but three times. It was clear the scale wasn’t the one that had been doing the lying. I had been clearly lying to myself. I started stepping on the scale every day since and have only failed to do so when I’m away on vacation. Nine months after I tipped the scales at 320 I was down to 195.

For the next 18 years I went between 195 and 225 pounds. It wasn’t until 12 years ago when I changed to my current eating patterns that includes a daily intake of roughly 4,000 calories from what is probably the most predictable food choice for six days a week in at least 10 counties that I have never dipped below 165 or popped above 170 except for a handful of days.

To make it clear, that weight is based on my own scales that I step on every day after I exercise and after I have removed every stitch of clothing as if a sweat drenched pair of socks are going to add 10 pounds.

That said it wasn’t until Saturday after what was close to my 150th stepping on the scales before my twice-a-month platelet donation at Delta Blood Bank that I finally didn’t empty my pockets of my smartphone, wallet, and keys. Even though they probably barely weigh a pound between them, I didn’t like the fact the blood bank scales would always put my weight five pounds higher than what my scales said two hours earlier.

Who really cares that the Delta Blood Bank scale puts my weight at 171 pounds when the only other folks that know it are the phlebotomist and whoever processes my platelets? I do.

But then again I know there is always a five pound difference between the scales.

I have been told my obsession with weighing myself every day isn’t healthy. Finally after the umpteenth time of being told that, I turned to the last person to tell me that (and who happened to be a health care professional) and rattled off a bunch of numbers.

When I ended the string of numbers with 110 over 70, I asked, “unhealthy or is that heathier than you?”

She realized what the numbers were and conceded the point but added that I was still “being obsessive weighing every day” since it didn’t give me the big picture.

And that is exactly what is wrong with the one way fits all people advice that experts dole out to people trying to lose weight or become heathier. That’s not to dismiss anything they say. It’s just you have to weigh it in terms of what it does for you.

I get that it isn’t just about how much you weigh. I figured that out years, if not decades, ago. Stepping on that scale reminds me of two things: 1) I never want to be 320 pounds again; and 2) exercising and eating well maximizes what I can get out of a day.

And since I don’t pare down exercise even on 100-degree plus days plus I realize you can lose a lot of body water jogging in raingear during a downpour or bundled up against 30 degree temperatures on a four-mile run, it keeps my hydration dialed in.

I also have religiously tracked on calendars for the last 30 years what I weigh. I used to log how many miles I cycled, how many miles I jogged, or how many minutes I spent in a group class or lifting weights at home. I stopped doing that perhaps five years ago when I realized I didn’t need to focus on goals such as cycling 10,000 miles in a year like I did in my 30s or even trying to put in 20 miles jogging and seven hours in group exercise classes a week as I do now. 

It’s gotten to the point where exercise is not only like brushing my teeth but it is a way of relaxing.

As for the numbers on the scale, that’s myself reminding me that every choice I make has consequences. It also doesn’t let me forget what it felt like weighing 320 pounds. And — more important — they remind me it is true that numbers don’t lie.