If you've been on a diet since the new year, but are beginning to get discouraged, a 10-second trick could get you back on track and keep the pounds off in the future. Simply weigh yourself once every day.

A new study published in PLOS ONE found that the more dieters weighed themselves, the more weight they lost. And if they went more than a week without weighing, they gained weight. The average time a participant could go between stepping on a scale and gaining weight was 5.8 days.

Researchers from Tempere University of Technology in Finland followed overweight dieters for up to a year and analyzed 2,838 weigh-ins. They found that weight loss was directly related to how often the individuals weighed. "The more often you weigh yourself the more weight you lose," said researcher Elina Helander.

Another study backs up the Finnish findings. Scientists at the University of Minnesota followed 3,600 dieters, and found that those who weighed every day lost an average of 12 pounds over two years — twice as much as those who weighed weekly, who only lost 6 pounds. In addition, those who weighed daily were less likely to regain the lost weight. Perhaps surprisingly, people who never weighed on their own gained rather than lost weight during the study.