For ages, scales have been used to determine the value of things to allow merchants to price their goods in a way that seemed fair to their customers. If a thing was worth a great deal of money, it was said to be worth its weight in gold. Many different types of scales are still used in everyday commerce. Just visit the grocery store and try to spot all the scales in use there. These days, however, scales also play a large part in medical care and health maintenance.

Medical scales are among the first device the doctor uses to help ascertain our health status when we go in for a check-up. The doctor will compare our weight against normal healthy weights for our heights, and even against the records of our own weight on previous visits to see if we have changed or have developed a trend of weight gain or loss over the course of time. Obesity is a strong risk factor for many different serious health conditions including both cancer and heart disease, so it is only fitting that the doctor should help us monitor our weights and let us know if we should undertake a weight loss program.

As we grow older, our activity levels tend to be reduced. We don’t go out and play football or race against our friends as we did when we were younger. Some of us may still engage in exercise like golf or hiking, but even that level of physical activity is lower than that of our youth. As a result, we burn off fewer calories and have a tendency to slowly gain weight over time. As the years mount, a few pounds here and there gets repeated over and over again until we step on the floor scales and find that we have gained thirty or forty pounds.

If we do notice a trend of weight gain, the best time to try to correct it is before it has gone too far. Keeping weight off in the first place is far easier than losing weight and then trying to keep it off. Stepping on the floor scales every week, or even every month and charting any changes to make trends easier to spot can let us know when it’s time to skip that morning bagel during our coffee break and whether we need to consider heading to the gym on a regular basis.

One of the biggest things that we can do to help ourselves grow old in good health is to keep our weight under control. Stepping on the scales and keeping track of weight gains over time is a simple first step to identifying and preventing weight problems that can so greatly impact our health as we age.

• Doctors Scales
• Price Computing Scales
• Jewelry Scales
• Detecto Scales
• Health O Meter Scales
• Seca Scales
• Ohaus Scales
• Pelouze Scales
• Analytical Balances
• Moisture Analyzers

The winter holidays have an uncanny knack for ruining diets. Either you “forget” about your diet from Thanksgiving to New Years Day, or you simply put off starting a diet until you commit to one with a New Year’s resolution. And who can blame you? No one wants to spend the winter holidays, which are notorious for their sweets, treats, and delicious eats, skipping sugar or counting carbohydrates.

This year, you don’t have to choose between your diet and enjoying all of the delightful foods the winter holidays have to offer! Resisting the multitude of holiday treats may be next to impossible, but you can manage how much you eat. By simply controlling your portion size, you can keep your diet in check and maybe even avoid having to make that dreaded New Year’s Resolution after all.

With a simple kitchen portion scale, you can at least control how much of the holiday indulgences you eat. While you won’t be toting your kitchen scale to the company Christmas party or Grandma’s house, you can use your kitchen scale at home to train your eyes to regulate the size of the portions you serve yourself. With a little practice using your kitchen scale, you be able to estimate more conservative and diet friendly portion sizes when you are eating somewhere other than your own home.

Selecting a kitchen scale is not difficult. There are many nice and affordable scales on the market today. You may choose a basic model like the Weighmax W-2810 Kitchen Bowl Scale for under thirty dollars; or you can select a top of the line model, such as the Seca 852 Digital Diet Scale, for around eighty dollars. My Weigh, a scale manufacturer, makes a talking scale which announces the weight of your portion as you are weighing items. This is the perfect unit for someone with poor eyesight and can be purchased for less than forty dollars. Another interesting kitchen scale option is the My Weigh iScale Electronic Kitchen Scale. This scale has a high resolution display that shows full animations while weighing.

Don’t be reluctant to purchase a kitchen scale because you fear it will be difficult to use. The kitchen scales available to today’s consumer are very user friendly. Most of the scales available today have a digital display, making them very easy to read. Also, many scales will measure in both metric and standard units (pounds/ounces and grams, etc.). Some kitchen scales come with their own easy to wash weighing containers. Other kitchen scales include useful features such as a backlit display, cumulative weighing mode (for obtaining the weight of a combination of different ingredients), percentage weighing mode (allowing you to easily weigh the ingredients you add in proportion to their main ingredient), or removable faceplate shields to protect your scale.

Make the smart investment of purchasing a personal kitchen scale and you will be well on your road to enjoying your holiday meals without the guilt!

• Electric Fireplaces
• Electric Fireplace Inserts
• Corner Electric Fireplaces
• Dimplex Electric Fireplaces
• Classic Flame Electric Fireplaces
• Wall Mount Electric Fireplaces
• Electric Fireplace Stoves
• Entertainment Center Electric Fireplaces
• Electric Fireplace Mantels
• Cherry Electric Fireplaces

The classic ideal of the romantic fireplace suggests that you just throw a log or two in the fireplace, strike a match, and sit back and enjoy the gentle, soothing warmth and the beauty of the dancing flames. Let me tell you, that isn’t the case.

In the first place, unless you’re buying firewood unsplit by the cord (128 cubic feet), you’re going to pay cut throat pricing. Split firewood runs about $400 per cord and higher. That’s partially dry wood, which means you have to buy it in the very early spring and then dry it yourself. Drying firewood means stacking it carefully to allow airflow through the stacks, but not just on the ground. You’ll need to place runners or long boards underneath to keep the wood elevated and off the moist ground. You’ll also need to cover it from above to keep the rain off it. Don’t just throw a tarp over it though or you’ll block the airflow and the tarp will prevent the moisture from escaping. Stacking it on your covered porch is pretty good, especially if you plan to use the wood during the winter or on rainy days. The alternative is trudging out through the rain or snow to lug back wood for the fireplace. At least the lifting and carrying will help you lose weight.

Once you got dry wood to burn, the real fun starts. By the way, if the wood isn’t sufficiently dry, it’ll burn cooler and create excessive creosote. Creosote is that fun black stuff that you see covering Chimney Sweeps in those great classic movies like Mary Poppins. It is also the cause of chimney fires. You see it sticks to the inside of the chimney and builds up in thick layers. Unfortunately, the stuff is flammable and can be ignited by sparks rising up from the fire, or just by very high temperatures if you let the fireplace get out of control. (I remember waiting outside in the snow on one fine Christmas morning as the firemen extinguished a chimney fire caused by disposing of the wrapping paper in the fireplace.)

Starting a fire takes more than striking a match. You have to start with kindling, smaller pieces of wood that burn more easily and quickly. You make a pile of kindling and then arrange the larger wood over it just so. The goal is to burn enough kindling so that by the time it burns out, the bigger pieces of wood have caught fire and there is enough of a base of ash to maintain the heat which supports the fire. By the end of the second or third year, you’ll either have learned to start a fire within 20 minutes or you’ll have given up the idea altogether.

Once the fire is started there’s the heat, lots and lots of heat. Expect the room with the fireplace to approach 80 or 90 degrees if it’s open to other rooms in the house. If it’s relatively closed then 100 degree temperatures should not be altogether unexpected. The good thing about the heat is that when the fire is really going well and throwing off lots of heat, the smoke is considerably lessened. Make no mistake though, the room and most of the house will smell of wood smoke, as will your clothes, your food, and quite possibly even your family pets. While in the latter case, this may be an improvement, it does take some getting used to. With practice, you’ll learn to adjust the damper properly to thoroughly fumigate the entire house.

Then if you can stand the blazing heat, you can finally sit back and enjoy the gentle beauty of the flames as they rapidly consume the properly dried wood that you paid $400 per cord or more for back in the spring. Of course, by this time, you may need to go back outside and get some more wood to throw on the fire to keep it going at a level that won’t make too much creosote and risk burning down the whole house.

So if you’re thinking of adding a fireplace, or firing up the one that came with the new house, think again. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to buy an electric fireplace, with a remote control that lets you turn the dancing flames on and off independently of the built-in heater? Take it from someone who’s been there, electric fireplaces and stoves are the way to go. And don’t even think about old-fashioned fireplace cooking, save yourself the aggravation and go with the electric grills.