by Cynserity Stevens

Created on: March 31, 2009

I believe there isn't an easy way to lose weight there are only quick fixes. The problem with quick fixes is that they do not nothing for long term goals.

Anyone can cut their caloric intake down to 1200 calories a day and starve themselves into a smaller size but no one can live that way forever. Sometimes this even has the opposite effect. Once your body goes into starvation mode it starts storing the calories you do eat as fat because it doesn't know when it is getting its next meal. Starvation is a bad quick fix.

If you have an extra $10,000 laying around you can always spend it on liposuction, but even that too is only a temporary fix. If you don't change your eating habits and your lifestyle then within a year you will notice your thighs jiggling a little more than they should and those dreaded dimples will show back up on the wrong set of cheeks.

So what is a person supposed to do? How does anyone ever lose weight, and keep it off, when it is just so hard? I'll tell you what I did that has worked for me.

I paid a personal trainer $150.00 to kick my butt three days a week for two hours each of those days, for eight weeks. I had to pay a personal trainer because I knew that if I just gave my money to a gym that wouldn't be enough to make me workout if I even bothered to drive there at all. After one week of my personal trainer, I was sure of two things.

1.) I hated her and prayed, the night before every scheduled meeting, that she would break an ankle.

2.) She was being paid off by the beneficiary of my life insurance policy to make my death look like an accident.

Next I cut my calories from the 2200-2500 I was consuming each day down to 1800. You can't drastically cut your calories and expect your body to be okay with the sudden loss. You have to do it gradually and be smart about it. I cut mine by cutting out soda, and store bought prepackaged sweets.

A year ago I was able to drink a case of Mountain Dew a week. I was also buying donuts, cinnamon rolls, and cookies from the bakery every time I went to the store which was once or twice a week. I stopped bringing it all into the house. You would be amazed at how quickly that craving for double chocolate chip cookies passes when you have to bake the cookies yourself from scratch.

Finally, I went to the store and bought myself a new bathing suit and a new pair of jeans and slinky little shirt. I couldn't get the jeans buttoned, the shirt looked like someone wrapped a couple rubber bands around a ball of play doh, and we won't even mention to horrors that the bathing suit revealed. Nonetheless, I took a picture of me in each outfit and stuck them on the refrigerator. I wasn't the only one in the house who stopped going to the fridge for a midnight snack thanks to those visuals.

Was any of this easy for me? NO! When I started I hated everything about it. I hated every step class I took, every mile I jogged on the tread mill, and every jumping jack I did.

Would I do it again? Yes, I do it every day. It was only hard in the beginning. I would go as far as calling it torture.

Now it is routine for me. Every Tuesday and Thursday I take a Step Aerobics class and a kick boxing class. Every Wednesday and Friday I work on strength training and then swim laps for an hour. Every Sunday my whole family takes a 10 mile hike, gets a soccer game going, or has a Dance Dance Revolution tournament in the living room.

My hard work has paid off. In a years time I have lost 54 pounds. I look and feel better than I have since high school. Anyone can do it. But I'll say it again, it's NOT easy!

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