One of Tara’s readers offers tip about how to avoid snacking. “I’ve found that brushing your teeth after every meal helps you resist the temptation to snack,” he wrote her. “Of course, it’s good for the teeth too.”

The really good news is that eating breakfast can actually help you lose weight. I reported here at “Eating to Lose Weight” that a new study show that breakfast skippers were heavier than those who ate breakfast.

Before breakfast is the best time to weigh yourself. I make sure to weigh and record the results the first thing each morning.

But be forewarned that your weight will go up and down for unfathomable reasons, cautions my friend John Dodson.  Don’t let it discourage you when you have done everything right the day before and your weight goes up.

The worst time to eat is after dinner. What we eat then doesn’t have a chance to get digested while we are still at least relatively active.

Make it a point to leave something on your plate – even if you waste it. You don’t have to eat everything that’s there, even if your mother kept telling you about all the starving children in China and India. If you can leave something to be eaten another day or not at all, you are in control.

The National Weight Control Registry more than 5,000 people who have succeeded in keeping their weight off for a long time. The Mayo Clinic Health Letter these biggest losers in its January 2007 issue.

Different strategies work for different folks, that article shows. And nothing works all of the time.

But the most common motivation of the losers who succeed was concern over their health or coming to the realization that their weight was at an all-time high. Those were my motivations in spades. What are yours? What works for you?