“I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations.”
Sonia Sotomayor
I had a funny experience at the gym the other day that got me thinking about metric conversion.
Entering my weight into the elliptical machine, I realized that I was mistakenly inputting pounds instead of the expected kilograms. Basically, I’ve been telling the machine that I weigh 342 pounds (rather than 155), totally skewing my calorie burn stats. And not in a good way; I’m burning fewer calories than I thought.
This isn’t the first time this confusion has arisen. In fact, it was a recent conversation with a nurse, who was asking me for my height and weight in centimetres and kilos (rather than in feet/inches and pounds), which left me drawing a total blank and clued me into the possibility that I might be having a misunderstanding with the gym equipment.
Canada, like most commonwealth countries, converted from imperial to metric in the 1970’s. So, in theory, I should have grown up fully metric but I swear I never stopped thinking of certain measurements in imperial. Growing up with American born parents probably didn’t help any.
I suppose it depends what I’m measuring. I do understand and use metric, with certain notable exceptions such as: my height, my weight, measuring a room, measuring a penis etc. Although it does beg the question: what else remains?
I rather enjoy some of the older imperial units of measurement. Going forward, I may well give distances to tourists and visiting relatives in chains and furlongs, refer to my apartment size in rods and reference my weight in gallons. When choosing archaic (and arguably inaccurate) measurement units, it’s important to always consider vanity sizing (i.e. do you want the area/weight/distance to seem smaller or larger than it is?).
Seriously though, it turns out this mishmash of measurements is a relatively common Canadian experience. Which suggests to me that the gym might want to default their machines to imperial instead. Except that, things do shift over time and more and more, young Canadians (20 somethings) actually know their height and weight in metric.
Then there’s fahrenheit and celsius. My American born mother always talks in fahrenheit, which forces me to consult google each and every time for a conversion calculator. And it happens a lot; because weather is pretty much what Canadians talk about. In that way, she is truly Canadian.
What about you? Do you use imperial, metric or a mix? Are you able to easily convert and move between the two? Have you had any funny misunderstandings?