We have many tips and tactics on how those of us who have diabetes can get down to a healthy weight and then keep off those pounds. I have written about many of them here, and each of them probably help some of us some of the time.

Like just about everyone else who has diabetes, I have struggled most of my life with my weight. So many of us are overweight, in fact, that one government study that I have cited here several times says that more than 85 percent of all people with diabetes -- including both type 1s and type 2s -- have an unhealthy body mass index of 25 or more.
This compares with the one-third of all Americans who are overweight. And for us being overweight is not only much more common but it also makes it much harder to control our blood sugar level.

I was able to shed most of those unneeded pounds starting in 2006 when I started taking Byetta. The next year, when I wanted to stay thin without any diabetes drugs, I lost even more weight when I switched to a very low-carb diet.


Losing that weight was one of the hardest things I ever did. But keeping it off proved to be even harder. I eventually set my goal to get down to a BMI of 19.5, the low end of the normal range, and actually reached it from time to time. But as I wrote here a year ago, after my weight increased when I took a cruise on a small ship, I simply failed at maintaining the weight I wanted to have.

Until I hit on a new way that for me is both simple and surprisingly easy. I am not claiming that it will work for everyone, and in fact it probably won’t be as easy for people who don’t follow a very-low carb diet and aren’t as motivated as I was by the discouragement over my repeated failures to maintain my healthy weight.

One cornerstone of this new way to lose weight and maintain weight loss is a twist on a standard dieting recommendation. But instead of weighing myself once a week, I weigh myself every morning.

Supposedly people get discouraged from daily weigh-ins because our weight seems to fluctuate up or down a couple of pounds every day for no good reason, or for at least for no reason that we can figure out. The fluctuations are certainly true in my experience. But, of course, the same fluctuations happen when we make our weigh-ins once a week, and that would be even more misleading.

Then, when the scales tell me that my weight is up that morning from the previous morning, I make an immediate course correction, which we know is easier in the long run than to wait until things get totally out of hand. My immediate course correction is simple. I skip dinner that day.

After eating my typical breakfast and lunch that day, I avoided consuming any calories after about 1 or 2 p.m. I do drink plenty of water, tea, and iced herbal tea.

Sometimes I tell myself that skipping dinner is intermittent fasting. But that would be an exaggeration. Most people think of intermittent fasting as fasting for at least 12 if not 24 hours, and can be a good thing for us to do for several reasons.