I wanted professional help.

My friend Dawn had been raving about her personal trainer (and the borderline psychotic 5:30am workout time) and had me chat up her "guru" Gene Darconte ‑- a veteran trainer at Crunch Fitness who calls a spade a spade. "This thing called fitness, it's not only difficult, it's boring. It's a gym fact that 8 out of 10 people who will join any facility today will never be seen here again. Most of my clients tell me they would not set foot in this building without me." Ain't that the truth.

Cut to Fort Greene Sports & Fitness (now part of Crunch), and me signing up to meet my new "best friend" ‑- personal trainer Carl Ditmars ‑- a former NFL player who was going to whip me into shape. He looked like he could kill a man ‑- and I liked that. If I was going to get fit, I wanted to know that coddling wasn't an option. As he told me, "I push the women harder. I tell the truth; that is what women want. I also show the positives. Women are hard on themselves as it is." That's an understatement.

Carl proved to be the perfect motivator. He took the time to figure out what I wanted to achieve (tone, strength, increased energy and stamina), gave me options I needed in my fitness routine, (a variation of workouts ‑- with him and on my own) and he let me chat him up about his lady friend. When we started, I was certain he was a sadist ‑- the squats, the circuit training, the ungodly push-ups. Giving up sometimes seemed like an awesome option. But something happened: I started to have fun. Now I (almost) look forward to getting up at 6:30am twice a week to sweat ‑- and feel accomplished before I get to work. Hell, I'm even there on the weekends because I want to make Carl (and myself) proud when he's not around to tough-love me.