My advice:

Ditch the scale. Weigh once a month (preferable a week or so after TOM) using a reliable balance beam scale. Use a tape measure the rest of the time. Stop letting your friends talk you into sabotaging your weight loss progress.
Your friends/family/coworkers can't make this plan work for you or lose weight for you..you have to do that for yourself.
If you stumble, get right back up and get back to your weight loss efforts right away. Those that are successful are successful not because they never had a failure. They're successful because they kept at it for as long as it took for them to succeed.