Small Changes (from www.prevention.com)

If your goal this Year is to lose weight and exercise more, forget the deprivation diet and marathon workouts. New research shows that taking baby steps—not giant leaps—is the best way to get lasting results. A study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine found that participants who made one small, potentially permanent change in their food choices and/or physical activity each week (such as drinking one fewer can of soda or walking 5 more minutes each day) lost more than twice as much belly fat, 2 1/2 more inches off their waistlines, and about 4 times more weight during a 4-month program, compared with those who followed traditional calorie-restriction and physical-activity guidelines.

"When you focus on just a couple of small changes at a time, you begin to ingrain some healthy habits that last for a lifetime, rather than trying an all-or-nothing approach that more often than not fails because it's too hard to follow," says Lesley Lutes, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at East Carolina University.




1. Food Journal
Keeping a food log helps control extra calories in two ways: the combination of plain old reality check (I just ate 30 minutes ago!) and awareness that what you're putting in your mouth will soon be recorded for posterity


2. Skip through the commercials
Get off your duff and move during your favorite TV shows. Skip, dance, go up and down some stairs, run in place—anything that gets your heart rate up so you feel somewhat breathless, says Geralyn Coopersmith, senior national manager at Equinox Fitness. Do it for each 2-minute break (forget the TiVo) during a typical 2-hour TV night and you'll burn an extra 270 calories a day—which can translate to a 28-pound weight loss in a year.


3. Walk 5 minutes more every day
In Lutes's pilot study, increasing daily activity levels by just a few minutes at a time helped participants lose weight. Eventually, your goal should be to do at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day (burning off about 120 extra calories daily, or 12 1/2 pounds a year), but it doesn't have to be all at once.
Some simple ways to get moving:
Walk around the perimeter of the grocery store at least once before heading toward the items you need.
Move in place whenever you're talking on the phone.
Go through or around the entire shopping mall instead of parking near the store you need.
Take a walk around the block at lunch and after dinner.

4. Strength-train in mini-bursts
Basic body-weight exercises like squats and push-ups are a simple way to build more metabolism-revving muscle in minutes, and research shows they're just as effective as hitting the gym. " Your muscles don't know the difference between working against your body's own resistance and on a fancy piece of equipment," says Wayne Westcott, fitness research director at Quincy College. "The one rule to follow is that each exercise should fatigue your muscles within 60 to 90 seconds."

Try this mini-workout: Do 10 reps each of knee push-ups, squats, crunches, lunges, and chair dips. Then gradually increase the number of reps it takes for your muscles to feel fully fatigued

5. Take a pedometer wherever you go
Just as you wouldn't leave home without your cell phone, make a pedometer a must-have accessory. Research shows pedometer users take nearly 2,500 more steps a day (over 1 mile, or about 100 calories) than nonusers. Over a year, that's enough to burn off about 10 pounds.

6. Eat Fruit -- Don't Drink It
Skip juice and eat the whole fruit, instead. You’ll not only get more heart-healthy fiber in your diet (3.5g for a small apple versus .5g in a glass of juice), you’ll also stay satisfied, longer. Research shows that fiber aside, liquid carbohydrates just aren’t as filling as solids. “When you chew a food, you generate more saliva, which in turn carries a message to the brain that your gut needs to get ready for digestion,” explains Koff. “Drinking doesn’t require such digestion, so the body doesn’t register that it’s full as quickly.” Plus there are the extra calories—48% more if you’re drinking that juice rather than eating the whole apple. (Do that daily and you may gain up to 4 pounds by year’s end.)

7. Get Technical Support

You know exercising with a friend makes you more accountable (nobody wants to leave a pal stranded on a street corner at 6 a.m.). But your workouts don’t always have to be done face to face. One study found women who had some form of social support, either through in person counseling or an on-line chat group, lost more than 15 pounds over a 9-month period, dropping about 300 calories from their daily diet and walking about a mile more each day than from their starting point.