If you’re looking for ways to control your portion sizes, a kitchen scale is a great investment. It’s the most accurate way to gauge how many calories you’re taking in, and it helps you learn how to eyeball appropriate portions.

Once you learn to approximate portion sizes at home, you’ll be much more serving savvy in restaurants as well. For example, it’s eye-opening to see how small an appropriate portion of ground meat (about a quarter pound or 4 ounces) is compared with the colossal hamburger at your neighborhood diner (which can be twice or even three times as large). Conversely, it’s encouraging to see how few calories are in that big bowl of veggies you’re about to steam for dinner!

Many scales now come with a built-in nutrition database, which allows you to skip the annoying step of riffling through a calorie-count book or searching online for accurate information. This makes the scale a great tool for doing nutritional analyses of your favorite recipes, or for figuring out how many calories are in a food that doesn’t come in a package with a Nutrition Facts label. It’s even handy for baking – it takes less time (and much less mess) to throw ingredients on a scale than to use measuring cups and spoons.

Tired of the same old weight loss advice? Here are 10 fresh, sneaky ways you can curb the urge to snack and boost your caloric burn.