Factor Meal Delivery Promo: Free $200 Withings Body-Scan Scale

i will accept Be afraid of the scales – the scales that weigh you, not the scales of the snake. And so my first reaction to the idea that I’d get a free body-scanning scale with a Factor Ready meal kit subscription was something like, “Oh no!”

It’s always bad or embarrassing news, I thought, and it’s probably nothing I don’t already know. However, as it turns out, I was wrong on both points.

Factor, of course, is the prepared meals brand from meal kit giant HelloFresh, which I’ve tested while reviewing dozens of meal kits over the past year. Think delivery TV dinners, but really fresh and never frozen. Factor meals are cooked in the microwave, but when I reviewed the Factor last year I found that the food actually tastes much better if you air fry the food (ideally using the Ninja Crispy, the best reheating device I know of).

In particular, Factor excels in the low-carb and protein-rich diet that has become equally fashionable among those who want to lose weight and those who prefer to gain it. Hence, this scale. Factor will want you to be able to track your progress in gaining muscle, losing fat, or both. And then possibly continue using the factor to create your own fitness or wellness goals.

While your first week of Factor is on discount right now, the regular-priced meals will be $14 to $15 per serving, plus $11 shipping per box. This is less than most restaurant deliveries, but certainly more than if you were preparing these meals yourself.

If you subscribe between now and the end of March, the Third Factor meal box will come with a free Withings Body Comp scale, which typically retails north of $200. Withings doesn’t just make you gain weight. It scans your fat, bone and muscle proportions, and indirectly measures stress levels and the elasticity of your blood vessels. In fact, it’s WIRED’s favorite smart scale, which is like a fitness watch for your feet.

Anyway, to get the deal, use code CONWITHINGS on Factor’s website, or follow the promo code link below.

is this my body

The scale that comes with a Factor subscription is as cute as it gets: the $200 Body Comp scale from high-tech fitness monitoring company Withings. The scale uses bioelectrical impedance analysis and a few other proprietary methods to measure not only your weight but also your body fat percentage, your lean muscle mass, your visceral fat and your bone and water mass, your pulse rate and even the stiffness of your arteries.

To get all this information, you just have to stand on the scale for a few minutes. The scale will identify you based on your weight (for this to work you’ll need to describe yourself accurately when setting up your profile), and then cycle through a series of measurements before giving you a pleasant weather report for the day.

Your electrodermal activity – “the skin’s response through sweat gland stimulation in your feet” – provides a gauge of tension, or at least arousal. Withings also aims to measure the age or stiffness of your arteries through the velocity of your blood with each heartbeat. It sounds esoteric, but it has some scientific support.

Note that many physicians caution against taking indirect measurements of body composition as gospel. Other physicians counter that even previous “gold standard” measurements are not completely accurate. This is a very old debate. For myself, I take smart-scale measurements as a convenient way to track progress, and it’s also a good at-home indicator of when there’s a problem that requires attention from a physician.

And yes, I was scared. There’s going to be so much bad news at once! I felt.