6 Daily Habits That Help You Lose Weight

The bathroom scale might be giving you too much information, from BMI and body-fat percentage to your weight broken all the day down to two decimal places. When dieters in one study were given their "health index score" (a weight range instead of a precise number) or their actual weight, the ones given the more vague information lost more weight than those who knew exactly what they weighed. Since there's no scale out there that'll give you a score like the subjects got, try weighing yourself weekly instead of daily and setting a weight loss range goal (5 to 10 pounds, for example) instead of zeroing in on a specific number. A fuzzier sense of your weight might give you more motivation to stay on track, the researchers said, because you can choose to believe you're on the lower end of the spectrum, while having the cold, hard numbers could be discouraging if yours are higher than you hoped.