After giving it much thought, I decided it is time to get serious about losing weight. This tip is one of a series I intend to write - about diet ideas that worked for me.

I decided to ignore all the extraneous advice and do it my way.

The first idea I had was to weigh myself every day. Sure, I know you are thinking, all the so called experts advise that you should weigh yourself only once a week at most. Why? Because they think you will get “discouraged” if you weigh too often and don’t see results from your diet.

If I check my weight just once every week, the problem with that is, I am not able to enjoy my successes (or my failures) soon enough.

The importance of feedback.

Experience has shown that if I engage in daily weighing the immediate feedback is critical in allowing me to assess whether the previous day’s behavior was helpful or counterproductive.

The first thing I purchased when I started the diet was a high quality scale similar to those you’d see in a Doctor’s office. I spent about $150 on this scale, but I feel confident with the results from it since it doesn’t give different readings every day. I think that having such a reliable scale and weighting myself right after getting out of bed, before eating breakfast each day, is a key to getting useful feedback.

This feedback shows me the effects that eating a fast food burger with fries at lunch can have on my weight. It shows that I truly will Lose Weight if I stay on the diet and I can generally see actual results every couple of days.

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.

There can be difficulty with stepping on the scale each day. This is most evident when I know I have been “bad” the day before. This negative feeling, however, does serve a purpose. It reinforces my resolve to improve my eating habits that day so the next session will be more positive.

Give this Idea a Try if You are Having Trouble Dieting.