Walk

How much do you walk on a daily basis? A good way to measure this would be to invest in a step counter, that keeps a count of how many steps you take in a day. If you are looking to lose weight but haven't been able to, chances are, you are inconsistent with your weight loss programme. Perhaps you aim for too much too soon. Or perhaps you try and diet, but give up before long. Instead, if you find you cannot exercise regularly either because of lack of time or motivation, try and make it a point to get in more stepsin a day. If you take around 5000 steps on an average day, to see some benefits to your health, try and double this count, to at least ten or eleven thousand a day. This should be easily achievable if you just try and walk a little extra a day, every chance you get.

Do you have a dog? Instead of sending your children or help to walk the dog everyday, try and take him out yourself, at least once a day. Not only can walking your pet be very relaxing, depending of course on the kind of pet and breed you have, but it also adds to the number of steps you takein a day.

Instead of having someone place a bottle of water and a glass at your workstation, every hour or couple of hours, get up and walk to the pantry, to get yourself a water refill. This stretches your legs a bit and gets your blood circulating, and although it may seem like almost no exercise, making a habit of this over an extended period of time adds to your walking time. This is so easy that it would be a shame for you NOT to do it!

Sugar

If you are overweight, try and reduce the number of calories you take in everyday by a small amount. Take one and a half spoons of sugar in your cup of tea instead of two. Over a period of time you can then further reduce this to one spoon.

Milk

Switch to skim or 1% milk. Milk is something you have everyday, and even if you have just one cup of tea and so don't bother about the fat in your milk, it all adds up over a period of time. In addition, if you are concerned about cutting your cholesterol intake, drink low fat milk.

Butter

If you eat toast everyday, stop buttering it, or put less butter than you normally do. Dip the toast in your tea to help you get it down, or make a tasty sandwich with egg whites, or onions, tomatoes, cucumber, potatoes etc so you don't feel the lack of butter. Leave fat consumption for when you really want to indulge! So when you dig into a chocolate cake, you will only be replacing the fat you avoided by skipping butter, instead of adding to it.

Lemon

35 year old Mira drinks a small cup of hot water with lemon juice (hot nimbu pani) without sugar, every single day after dinner. She swears it has helped her lose weight. Citrus fruits are a natural diuretic and prevent water retention. Mixing it with hot water helps her drink it easily, as she doesn't add sweetener.