How many times do I have to keep putting my website on a diet to publish?

Just about every time i was ready to publish a page on my website, i was told I was x amt of KB over, and gradually i manged to get it down below a full KB, but I was practically tearing the guts of my content out to get it down. I've even optimized the pics too, or maybe I didn't optimize often enough. I'm new at using an iMacPowerbook Pro which might explain a lot. LOL, is this a trip! or what?!