The internet and TV are full of suggestions, tips, programs, products and such that will "have you in the best shape you have ever been. There are literally thousands of diets you can try. You can start one where you eat a certain food, bacon, tuna, chocolate chip cookies, or one where you buy a meal plan and the food is sent to you. If you are really ambitious you can join a gym or buy some exercise equipment like a Bowflex, or a treadclimber.

Regardless of the approach you take, nothing is going to work unless you commit to it. There is not a piece of exercise equipment out there that will help you get in shape and loose weight just by using it alone. You are going to have to use that equipment along with something else. You have got to change the way you do things. It doesn't have to be drastic but you need to make a change.

Without any further rambling or discussion here are the two things you need to do to loose weight and get in shape.

1. Adjust your diet. Generally this means simply eating less but you also need to consider what you are eating. Eating the wrong things is just as bad as pigging out on one thing.
2. Get some exercise. You can stop eating and you will loose weight to a certain point. If you don't combine the change in diet with some activity you well never get in shape. After all, what good is it to hone a rock hard and chiseled body only to collapse out of breath from the strain of carrying a large smoothie up 3 steps to your table.

What I mean here is you have got to use common sense and commitment to achieve the goals you have in mind.

So where do we go from here? The first place to start in reducing calorie intake is putting a stop to snacking outside of meal time. Some people eat when they get bored, and some eat when they get upset. Doesn't matter what the trigger is you have to change the way you are doing things, and you can make yourself change.

Extreme Diet Alternatives

If been on two major and very drastic diets in my lifetime and I hope never to start another one. The first one I like to call the Chrysler diet and it doesn't have anything to do with jogging to the top of the Chrysler Building twice a day or chasing a Chrysler down the road for all day. All you have to do for this one is get hit by a 63 Chrysler New Yorker and go into a coma for 2 weeks. I know, this one does sound a tad over the top but I did loose 40 pounds in the space of four weeks. Of course I also ended up with two broken arms, a collapsed lung, ruptured diaphragm and a ruptured spleen, but boy did I look good in a bathing suit, after all the scars healed.

The second diet is what I loving call the "Say the word food and I'll puke" diet. First step, contract a potentially terminal disease and second, undergo chemotherapy treatments to get rid of step one. As with the Chrysler diet, you are subject to the uncertainty of living through the diet but if you do, try 35 pounds in 3 weeks work. Incredible!

If these two alternatives seem a little drastic you can always try something a little my reasonable but first I need to make the disclaimer required by my legal department and insurance company.

• Disclaimer: By no means do we, the writer and Gulf Coast Info, advocate anyone attempting either of the two diet techniques mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. Try either one and you run the distinct possibility of dying a horrible death and being fat is always better than being dead. Don't try them, Don't try them.