So I've been trying to lose weight and trim my waist since 2008, unfortuantly I have beem failing at doing so. At first my ex before he became my ex called me fat, so that kind of motivated me to lose weight, now I'm single and every so often I would feel envious of how other people look, I know I can do it, but how can I motivate myself to? What exercises can I do, what kind of foods should I eat? I don't eat much fast food as before, I eat a lot of home cook meals nowadays.

Please help? Somebody, anybody?

If you are serious about losing weight for the long term you need to think about approaching it as a lifestyle change. While exercise is important, diet should be the main focus.

Losing weight is all about calories and when people just exercise they eat more to make up for it without realizing. There is no key or magic trick to reaching your goals, losing weight is an arduous battle full of small successes and set backs. You need to make exercise apart of your daily routine, write down everything you eat and drink (many people don't realize how many calories they drink in a day), get all the junk food out of your house, get off the couch and be active in your down time, weight yourself every day, and get those who are close to you involved.

There are no secret exercises to do or foods to eat; but the best kind of exercise is high intensity cardio things (running, biking, rowing, etc.) and the best foods to substitute are whole grains, fruits, and vegetables (but if the only food you ate all day was 1500 calories of Ben and Jerry's you could still lose weight, it just wouldn't be that healthy)

My goodness so its not really that hard, just have to focus huh? What's a healthy calorie amount?

As far as a healthy caloric intake, its difficult to give a general number. Typically anything below 1200 is unhealthy and its recommended to take in between 500-1000 calories less than your total caloric expenditure each day. Studies have shown that burning around 2500-2800 calories a week from exercise is necessary to lose weight and keep it off. Of course without doing metabolic testing you can't know for sure how many calories you burn in a day. You just need to find your own personal balance and what works for you, just make sure your writing down everything you eat so you know about how many calories your taking in each day.