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.

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.

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.

Everyday feedback lets me see both my successes and mistakes. My prior, failed, dieting attempts have shown that weekly weighing is not frequent enough for my requirements. Seven days is too long and results in me forgetting the root causes of gained or lost weight. My session with the scale each morning allows me to go over in my mind the previous day’s food consumption.

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.