My new idea was simple - do it my way and ignore all the advice.

I planned to check my weight everyday at the beginning. A lot of people think against that idea since it can be discouraging if you control your weight every day and feel like your efforts on your diet is meaningless. Experts suggest to check weigh only once a week for that reason.

My problem with weighing only once a week? I don't get feedback from my efforts (or failures) fast enough.

Feedback is the Key

By weighing myself every day, I learn immediately whether my actions and eating pattern from the previous day were successful or not in trying to lose weight.

A key to the usefulness of this feedback is using a high quality reliable scale and weighing myself at the same time every day - for me it is before breakfast, right after I have gotten out of bed. The high quality scale is the first thing I bought when I started the diet. I spent about $150 on the scale - it looks like the one you see at a Doctor's office. With my scale, I feel confident that the results I am seeing aren't because the scale is giving me different readings every day.

The feedback provides me daily assurance that, indeed, if I eat a fast food burger with fries at lunch, the next day I won't have lost much (or any weight). And, if I stay on the diet, I will, in fact, lose weight. I can usually see real results almost every day or two.

This daily feedback tells me exactly what I am doing right or wrong. I found in the past that weighing in only weekly is too infrequent. A week is long enough to forget what it was that caused the change up or down. Daily weighing lets me mentally review the day before each morning.

Of course, as with any idea, daily weighing has its downsides too. The most important of these is that I can feel bad when I've had a bad day the day before. It is important not to let that feeling get me down, though.

If you are finding it difficult to shed pounds, I highly recommend giving this tip a try.