Making a lifestyle change is never easy. It takes a whole lot of dedication, time, patience and the ability to understand that nothing life-changing or drastic happens over night.

Whether you are trying to lose weight, gain muscle mass or just begin a healthier lifestyle, you are signing yourself up for an amazing journey. Watching your body change, and feeling better about yourself from the inside out is such an awesome process and only motivates you to keep pushing. Simply making the realization that you want or need to do this for yourself, is a huge step in the right direction.

There are going to be plenty of moments when you get frustrated that you aren't seeing results, or think that it's too hard and want to give up. Don't. Think about how much you have changed in the past few months or weeks since you started. Whether you see weight loss or muscle gain or not, think about the girl you were on day one. Maybe you were the girl who always snacked in bed, or ate a little too much ice cream, put too much sugar in your coffee, drank almost every night or always let your cravings get the best of you. Now, you've ditched those habits - all things you thought that you could never live without. Or maybe you were the girl that always had an excuse not to work out, and now you go almost every day. Or maybe you were the girl that barely ate all day, and now you chow down on healthy meals several times a day. You are doing things that your old self would never even imagine accomplishing. That in itself is reason to keep pushing and a reminder that every day you are becoming a better you.

There will be moments when you look at the scale and tell yourself this isn't worth it. Trust me, it is. Put that scale away and stop methodically weighing yourself, because the number you see between your toes is just a number, and so many things play into that number. You could be carrying water weight, you could be bloated, it could be that time of the month, you could be gaining muscle (muscle weighs more than fat) and on and on and on.

There will be moments when you just want to quit because it's too hard. But guess what? Changing your body isn't easy. If it were easy, then everyone would do it. And it doesn't happen over night and no amount of diet pills will get you there.

You can wish and wish and wish to look or feel a certain way, but until you start taking action, your wish will never come true.

So don't take the easy way out and fall for some magical pill that will grant you everything you ever wished for in days and not months. Don't give up when you have bad days. Don't let yourself fall back into your old ways. Don't tell yourself you can't do it- because you can. The only person holding you back is yourself. Your journey will have highs and lows, tears of frustration and happiness, days full of doubt and days full of love. But in the end, there is nothing more satisfying and empowering than watching your body change and knowing all the blood, sweat and tears that went into making the person you are today. Three months from now you will thank yourself, and three months from then you really will. It's time to stop making excuses and start making a difference. You're not after a diet, you're after a lifestyle change. A diet has an end date and your lifestyle doesn't.

So the only question is: how bad do you want it?