Every three years my work arranges for a medical check-up. The last time I went I got a clean bill of health except for my hearing as, according to their medical tests, I was “deaf”.

I wasn’t because I could hear them tell me this.

I said: “What?”

And they said “You’re deaf”

And I said “What?” because that joke never gets old.

It turned out that the machine used to test my hearing was broken. It was meant to go “beep” and I was meant to press a button to confirm every time I heard a sound but it went “beep” silently and then blamed me for not hearing it. A re-run of the test a couple of weeks later confirmed there was nothing wrong with my hearing and they said “you’ve got perfect hearing.”

And I said “What?”

And they said…

Told you this joke never gets old.

I was booked into this latest check-up with a different GP and, it turned out they ran a completely different series of tests. They didn’t even test my hearing, but they did record my weight by asking me to take off my shoes and socks and to stand on a metal plate while an electrode was clipped to my finger.

“This will record your body fat percentage,” they said.

And I said “What?” but it didn’t work this time as the test had nothing to do with hearing.

After checking my weight and then my height they confirmed that my body was 14.3% and I said: “WHAT!” as I genuinely couldn’t believe my ears. For the last five years, I’ve had electronic scales that rigidly and consistently told me my body fat was 24%, just shy of being technically obese.

I didn’t believe it but I also didn’t not believe it. I thought it must be accurate-ish and that, despite quite a lot of training at times, and looking more closely too a silhouette of a lamppost than a drummer from a marching band with a drum strapped to his chest, I thought my body fat must be on the high (but invisible) side.

But it wasn’t. It was just wrong. The machine was wrong, the reading was wrong and the whole time I’d been a perfectly normal and slim 14%.

So, if you want to lose weight then just give me a call and, for the right price, I have a weight machine to sell you. Just measure yourself for a year and then get someone else to do it properly and you too can lose 10% body fat just like that.