Morning Routine Confession: Every morning, after I have brushed my teeth, peed and obsessed over my hair, I weigh myself. For the past few years I have worked to keep my weight at the exact same number. It is My Number. I don’t remember specifically how I arrived at this precise number but I like it. I think I look best at this number. My doctor is happy with this number—it’s a healthy number for my height and frame. It is an interesting challenge to keep oneself at an exact weight at all times. I slip sometimes. Sometimes I am under, sometimes I am over. But I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have learned than none other than Mr. Rogers himself also had a number and it featured in his daily routine!
… Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds…. And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change–he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television–and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, “the number 143 means `I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say `love’ and three letters to say `you.’ One hundred and forty-three. `I love you.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”
taken from here.
