Normally, shedding a few pounds - or if you follow the metric system, kilos - spells good news for the average person. But, if you happen to be Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, Paris, you'd probably feel that this could spell trouble for the scientific community.

Nope, we're not talking about Mr. Davis' waistline here - the loss in weight is being attributed to a 118-year-old cylinder that's the internationally recognized constant for the kilogram.

Davis explained that by comparing this cylinder's weight with other duplicate weights, they discovered that the prototype - made back in 1889 - lost 50 micrograms. That's approximately the weight of a fingerprint, meaning those extra notches on your scale are probably due to your extra serving of pie, not because of this minute fluctuation.

But while normal folks aren't expected to feel the effects of this discovery, Davis did note that organizations like the U.S. customary system might run into problems. "They depend on a mass measurement and it's inconvenient for them to have a definition of the kilogram which is based on some artifact," he said. The scientific community might also experience complications - inconsistent metric constant can have considerable effects on calculation for electric generation.

At this point, it's still unclear if the "original" kilogram did indeed lose weight, or if its later kilogram cylinder copies are simply heavier. This was the point raised by senior researcher Michael Borys of Germany's National Measures Institute in Braunschweig.

The whole matter is scheduled to be discussed this November in Paris by a panel of scientists. Specific topics to be touched on are other possible (and more accurate) calculations for not just the kilogram (for weight), but the Kelvin (for temperature), and the mole (for precise amounts).The kilogram cylinder itself, made of platinum and iridium alloy, might also be replaced with more reliable constants. One proposal calls for a Silicon-28 isotope crystal shaped as a sphere.