A friend saw that her fitness center membership was about to expire, so she rushed in to renew — even though she hadn’t been inside the place for months.

“I bet you have a name for people like me who pay for memberships but never show up to work out,” she said jokingly.

“Yes,” the owner replied.  “We call them ‘profits.’”

I’ve been there — and you probably have, too.   “I MUST get in shape,” we think.  We join a gym and the first day  work out enthusiastically on all the equipment. Or we buy a killer dvd that guarantees to make us svelte in 30 days if  we undergo their brand of exercise torture.  Or we buy an expensive machine and give it a thorough workout as soon as it arrives.

Then we cannot move for three days. Our muscles scream with pain and we feel like joining the chorus.  We had the best intentions, but  already are on the road to giving up.

So let’s not go there anymore. Let’s do something easy.  It’s inexpensive, painless, won’t take up space in your bedroom, and you DO have time to work it into your schedule.  You just need three things:

A pair of shoes.

A pair of feet.

A pedometer.

Here’s how it works:

Get a good pedometer and wear it throughout the day from the time you get up until you go to bed at night.  Write down the number of steps you took that day. Do that for three days in a row, then take the average of the number.  You may be surprised.I thought I was ‘active’ but found out instead that I was practically comatose!

Suppose you have an average of 3,200 steps.  This week, make it your goal to add 200 steps.  Every day you will make sure  you walk at least 3,400 steps.  Next week you will add 200 more, so you take at least 3,600 steps — and so on.  Eventually you will work up to 10,000 steps or more.

Is it hard to add 200 steps?  Not at all!  Just take a walk through your house or out in your yard.

Will it do any good?  Yes.  It will get you out of your chair and moving.  It will be painless and doable, so this is one plan you can do forever.  We’ll talk more about benefits and strategies for adding steps in later posts.

So in our easy, Beyond Gorgeous, fitness plan we will:

• Eat mostly from the green, low glycemic list, with some yellow and only occasional red. Click here to learn about the Green Light/Red Light eating plan.
• Keep an eye on our calories so that we take in about as much as we need to maintain our healthy goal weight. Click here to read about how to control your calories.
• Put on our shoes and start stepping out.

You can do that — for the rest of your life!

Eating to live and living for Christ,
Susan Jordan Brown