It’s time to make friends with your scale.

After tracking more that 16,000 dieters, studies have shown indisputable evidence that the scale is one of the most effective tools for controlling weight.
Here are five tips to help you make friends with your scale and use it to your weight loss advantage.

1. Weigh yourself daily. The more you weigh yourself, the more you will lose. In one study, people that weighed themselves daily lost twice as many pounds as people that weighed weekly. People that avoided the scale typically gained. 

2. Buy a basic digital scale that displays weight to the nearest ½ pound. Don’t spend hundreds on a high end scale that estimates your body fat percentage because there are too many inaccuracies based on fluctuations in how much water you drink. Plus it’s just one more number you need to worry about.

3. Weigh yourself at the same time every day. Preferably first thing in the morning after using the bathroom and with nothing on. Track your results and focus on the pattern over time. The number may go up and down from one day to the next, but the overall direction month to month should be down if you're trying to lose weight.

4. Weigh yourself in the same spot every day. Your bathroom floor should work just fine, but if the floor is textured the readout could be off. Carpet of any thickness can absorb some of your weight, throwing off the scale's sensors and decreasing your weight by 20 pounds or more. For the most accurate reading, place your scale on a bare floor that's hard, flat, and level. You can test the scale's accuracy by weighing an object whose weight you know - like a dumbbell.

5. Track other markers such as the size of your waist and thighs (using a tape measure), how your clothes fit, or how much energy you have. In a recent study from the University of California at Berkeley, women in their mid-50s followed a 12-week cycling routine while eating a diet designed to maintain their weight. One 56-year-old lost just 1 pound but dropped two sizes, thanks to a 7 percent decrease in body fat. She replaced about 4 pounds of fat with 4 pounds of muscle. Pound for pound, muscle is firmer and denser, and it takes up about one-third the space of fat. But do not assume your scale is stuck due to new muscle. According to Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., author of Get Stronger, Feel Younger, it normally takes about a month of strength-training to add a single pound of muscle.

Don't forget, if you don't have a scale at home you can still weigh in at the library.  You will have to keep your clothes on though!  :)