Scales For You

Our grandmothers cooked on an old wood stove with a few pots and pans and a measuring cup or two.  Wouldn’t they be in awe of the modern kitchens of today!  Every kind of appliance and gadget is available to cooks now, but guess what–we all eat out!  One lady said, “I wouldn’t have a kitchen, but it came with the house.”  With the gas prices rising, we may all need to go to cooking school and learn to cook at home again. 

If we’re really going to get serious about cooking, we need to take a look at our kitchen and its appliances and gadgets.  Do we have a set of food scales.  Food Scales are useful for accurately weighing ingredients such as butter or shortening, as well as measuring food portions as specified by diet requirements.   Oh, I didn’t mean to mention diet, but it is an important word if you really want to stay healthy.  Many health conditions require specified diets and a good set of food scales can make it easier and more accurate to follow the plan. 

Life is too fast.  We drive too fast, we live too fast, and we eat too fast.  Everybody has somewhere they need to be and they’re in a hurry to get there.  We shovel our food down as fast as possible, because we’re already late getting to somewhere.  Even the ones of us who are retired seem to have a heavy schedule, largely because everyone we know thinks we have plenty of time to do whatever they need done, or serve on some committe they don’t want to fool with, and we haven’t learned to say, “NO!”

Every diet I’ve been involved with says chew your food slowly so your stomach can tell your brain it doesn’t need anymore before we’ve overeaten.  If we would all take a deep breath, back up, slow down, and reprioritize our lives, we could eat slowly enough to actually enjoy our food.  By eating smaller amounts, but enjoying it more, we might lose some of that excess weight or, at least, stop gaining.  It helps to weigh our food portions on a food scale before placing them on the plate, then we’ll know how much we’re actually eating.  Many times, we don’t realize how much we have consumed until we have that too full feeling.  Life is complicated.

Sometimes it’s funny what we treasure or collect.  Many of us collect so many treasures that we don’t have a place to keep them.  One of my friends retired and was going to reorganize her collection of treasureable junk, but couldn’t decide where to start or how to accomplish it.  I told her to leave it in the boxes in the closets and when she dies, her children will dump it.  There’s a lot of truth in that concept, because often, our children don’t treasure our keepsakes and souvenirs that we collected over the years.

I wonder if my children will treasure my pocket scales.  They’re neat because I can stick them in my pocket or purse, get them out in the restaurant and weigh my food portions.  Some dieters may not feel it is necessary to be that particular about food portions in restaurants, but when my work keeps me away from home a lot, I can’t afford to leave my diet at home.  These handheld scales are one of my usable treasures.  Many of my treasures are not usable, just treasured.

Happy Fathers’ Day to all the fathers out there!  I lost my father in 1996 and still miss him.  However, my children have a good father and I celebrate Fathers’ Day with him.  Fathers are important to children.  I think our society, especially the courts, are realizing the role the fathers need to play in their children’s lives.  It used to be that when there was a divorce with children, many times the father seemed to divorce the children along with their mom.  Now, the courts and judges appear to be trying to keep both parents involved in their children’s lives.  In fact, reseach is showing now that children who do not have both parents involved in their lives are having trouble developing emotionally like they should.  When a parent disappears from a child’s life, the child’s first question is, “Why doesn’t my parent love me?”  The second question is, “What’s wrong with me?”  If my parent doesn’t love me, something must be wrong with me.

Obesity also adds to a child’s difficulty in developing emotionally.  Many children in America are now suffering from obesity.  It’s too easy to run through a drive through, order fast food, and go home.  The children grow up thinking fast food is the only good food.  Why not get a set of cooking scales and teach the children how to cook at home?  It will help build a good parent/child relationship, while forming good eating habits. 

Have you ever heard the term “nutrient density”? This refers to the concept of getting the most nutrition for the leaast amount of calories. For example, whole grain products are nutrient dense.

Getting your nutrients from nutrient dense foods is clearly an asset in the process of losing or even maintaining your body weight. Get a set of good kitchen scales and look for recipes that call for nutrient dense ingredients and you’re on your way to a healthier body.

Why is it that every time I need to go on a diet, every program says, “Don’t think ‘diet’”? What am I supposed to think? I need to lose weight. Is that not connected with going on a “diet”?

Maybe I need to rethink the entire thing. Maybe I could think “withdrawal”. Withdrawal from food! That should help me feel better! I’ll get some pocket scales so I can weigh the food I’m not going to eat! On second thought, I think I’ll just go on a “diet”.

Numbers are very precise.  If you don’t believe me, reverse two numbers in a phone number and see if it works.  Or let the bank run a check through the bank as $425.32 when it was supposed to be $25.32.  Just one number can make a big difference!

Scales need to be precise, also.  Whether you’re measuring in grams, ounces, pounds, or pennyweights, you want the same item to weigh the same amount each time it is placed on the scales.  If it doesn’t, you can’t depend on the results, whether you’re cooking, measuring medicines, or weighing yourself.  Escali scales are accurate and precise.  Check them out.

Have you ever tried cleaning a house for a luncheon while babysitting a 4-month old baby?  I clean a shelf in the refrigerator, then feed a baby, then wipe off the cookstove, then rock a baby, etc.  It’s a little here and a little there, but hopefully, it will all add up to a clean house in three or four days.  The baby doesn’t know she is interfering with my plans; she has her own plans and they come first.

The day before the luncheon, I’ve got to start the food preparation.  Some of it can be done a little at a time like the cleaning, but some of it cannot be.  My food scales will speed along the process, especially the cleanup part.  It has the Tare feature that subtracts the weight of the container, allowing me to measure my ingredient, reset to zero and measure the next one.  I need all the convenience I can get if I’m to be ready for the luncheon and not neglect the baby.  I guess you call this multitasking.

I’m having a large group of people come to my house on Friday for lunch.  I’ve been trying to plan a schedule of work so I won’t have so much to do on Thursday and Friday.  I made a list of all the cleaning chores I want to accomplish, then I made a grocery list so I want forget any items needed when I get ready to prepare the food.  I’m also writing down the parts of the food preparation that can be done Thursday and the part I will have to do Friday morning.  I’m trying to “leave no stone unturned.”

Why don’t I carry out this same planning process concerning the weight I need to lose?  I could plan healthy menus for a week, make a grocery list, decide how far in advance the different foods can be prepared, and even plan for a meal or two out in restaurants.  A pocket scale will fit into my purse and can be used in a restaurant to measure my food portions.  Restaurants always seem to put too much food on a plate.  By asking for a carry-out box before starting to eat, the excess food can be taken off the plate, thus avoiding the temptation of overeating.  I can still “empty my plate” and not have to feel guilty.

I have a friend that goes 15 miles almost every day to workout at a gym.  I’m sure that’s good, but there are so many ways of exercising while working around the house.  Digging in the flowerbeds and around the shrubbery, hauling rocks and placing them on a bank to keep it from washing, mowing with a pushmower, vacuuming the house, etc. to name a few.  Now that I think about it, the gym does sound like more fun!

Regardless of the exercise routine we undertake, we won’t see much difference when we step on the bathroom scales unless we get our eating habits under control.    If we go out and exercise, then come in and think, “I’ve burned lots of calories, now I can eat more,” we have defeated the purpose of exercising.  It takes planning healthy meals, measuring food portions to avoid overeating, and plenty of exercise if we want to see those extra pounds melt away.