What if you could improve your health with little effort and the help of a little $10 device? There’s no catch and it’s as simple as can be. Ready, drum roll - buy a pedometer.

A pedometer is a little device that measures the number of steps you take while wearing it. It fits on your belt or in your pocket.

The benefits of walking have been documented for years. It makes sense that if you increase the distance you walk, you get healthier and getting a little healthier could save your life.

Trust Human Nature - Yours

What gets measured gets done. It’s human nature. Get attention, keep attention and people take action. The problem is making measurement simple. A pedometer is simple, takes no work, no assembly and no time. How’s that for simple?

A 3 Step Process

Fitness in small doses. That’s why your here. Here is an easy simple workout trick that’s disguised as part of your daily routine.  Three simple steps will improve your health. You won’t be running a marathon, but you will be get more exercise without a lot more effort.

1. Buy a pedometer. Find on locally or they’re available from Amazon for less than $10.00.
2. Use the pedometer for a week and record the results.
3. Increase the number of steps or distance you take every week. Pick a number you like. I’m thinking 5%. Do that for 10 weeks and you will increase your steps by 62.9%. You will improve your fitness with very little effort.

10 Ideas for Walking More

1. Park your car and walk an extra 20 yards
2. Park your car at the end of your driveway
3. While waiting - pace
4. At an event, like a kid’s game - stand and walk a bit rather than sitting
5. Get off the elevator on the floor below and walk up a flight of stairs
6. Walk down the stairs rather than taking the elevator
7. Walk to colleagues office rather than calling on the phone
8. Take the long route to the rest room or use a rest room further away
9. Take a walking break instead of a sitting break
10. At a store, walk around the store to get to what you want to buy
11. Your turn….

Record your results every day. Set a goal to beat last week’s average by 5% or 10%. Before you know it you’ll be feeling better. Then you might want to move up to the The Ultimate Simple Workout Routine.

Once upon a time, there was so much more time to do more of everything. We even had time to play, run and exercise. We didn’t think need to motivation to work out, it just seemed to happen.

Then some how, some time, when we weren’t paying attention, all that free time went away. Now we have a lot to do and it seems like less time to do it. We’ll leave how that happened for another time.

Now, we need to figure out how to squeeze or carve, or do something to find time to work out.

I went through periods when I was working in New York City and living in New Jersey. The commute was over an hour in each direction and the days sometimes wouldn’t end until after 11:00 p.m. Then it was back to the 6:35 a.m train for more. There wasn’t much time in those days, so I had to invent it. Here are the few of the things I did.

Close the Door

I would steal five minutes, several times a day, and stretch. Sometimes, I would close the door to my office and do it. Other times, while waiting for a meeting to start, I would stretch. When stretching, I would take really deep breaths through and out the nose. My favorite stretch is to fully extend the arms above the head, open the hands like a fully blossomed flower and push to the sky for 10 counts and then lower the arms back down to the side. Breath in while raising the arms and out when lowering. Go slow and smoothly.

Stealing the Lunch Hour Back

If you work in place where you can walk to lunch, do it at least twice a week. I would even hold meetings at restaurants where we had to walk for five fifteen minutes. If you don’t work where you can walk, drive and park ten minutes from the restaurant door. You can call your order ahead so your don’t need to wait.

Steal Back TV Time

How long do commercials run? About three minutes. Why not do three minute exercise segments, or, exercise and watch TV. What can you do in three minutes?

• Pushups
• Sit-ups
• Dumbbell Exercises
• Jump Rope
• Aerobic Steps
• Yoga Postures

Dance Dance Dance

Have some fun. Put on your favorite dance music and dance for 10 minutes. Don’t look now, you just got a workout.

Finding inspiration to work out is easier when you’re not really giving anything up that you value. If you need workouts to lose weight, make it a goal to find one half hour three time a week to work out for a least 30 minutes. You can use The Ultimate Simple Workout Routine to do that.

Where Can I Find 30 minutes 3 Times a Week?

Now this is really making time to exercise. This is the big leagues and requires more creativity. Many others have suggested carving it out of your sleep time. They say you’ll feel better for it. I disagree, you’ll feel really lousy with even less sleep and you’ll hate to exercise afterward. Here’s some ideas that might just work for you:

• Walk and take the kids with you
• Walk and take your Mom or Dad, or both, with you
• Walk at the mall and reward yourself with a smoothie afterwards
• Cancel one or two of your TV Shows and do it then
• Eat lunch an hour early at your desk and walk during lunch hour
• Stay late at work, but workout instead
• Go early to pick-up the kids and walk while waiting
• Stop doing something you really hate and workout instead

If your best friend asked you to help them find a way to make time to workout, what advice would you give them? Well?

Find it, steal it, make it. Do it you one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes or an hour. Make it fun and don’t give up anything you love to do in the process. That’s how you can go about finding time to workout.

What if you could improve your fitness without strain or pain? Yes, it takes a little time, but not much.

This most basic workout routine requires no equipment. No weights, dumbbells, mats, or anything else is needed. It works for women, for men and for kids. It is designed to take 30 minutes, but you can cut it down if necessary, especially when just starting.

Simple fitness can be accomplished in small doses, and there are many things that you can do in smaller doses than we’ll talk about in this plan. This routine can be accomplished at home or away from home if you’re traveling.

The simple workout routine requires three steps:

1. Short Warm-Up
2. Workout
3. Short Cool Down

1. Short Warm-Up

The short warm-up should take about five minutes. It is designed to warm you up and stretch you out, but at a very low impact level. We will warm-up in x easy steps:

Shake It Up

Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your hands at your sides. This is the Basic Position and will be used throughout these movements. There are two movements involved. First, one leg at a time, raise and lower your heels, alternating feet. Raise as high as you are comfortable with an increasing pace. At the same time, shake your hands and arms and roll your shoulders. You can also roll your head around your shoulders. Go slow. Remember, this is low impact. Do this for about one minute.

Stretch the Legs

Standing with feet shoulder width apart with arms at your side (basic position), keeping your leg as straight as you can, lift your left leg straight out in front of you. Do the same with the right leg. Do this for a five to ten count.

Next, from the basic position, raise up on your toes and lower back on to your heels. Do this 5-10 times.

Finally, with feet shoulder width apart, cross your arms over your chest and bend forward at the waist. Stretch until you feel it in the backs of your legs. Do this 5 times.

Warm Up the Upper Body

From the basic position, raise your hands straight up above your head and then lower them back down to your side. Do this 10 times.

Next, from the basic position, keeping your arms straight, lift them out to the side like you are flapping your wings. Do this 10 times.

Finally, from the basic position, swing your arms up to shoulder width and then back as far as you can go without stress. This requires motion, so go slowly first to find your comfort zone.

Now you are warmed up for our simple workout routine. If you did nothing more than this, you would be improving your fitness. On days when you have no time to workout, this is a good way to get fitness in a small dose.

2. The Ultimate Simple Exercise

This is so simple and effective. It’s not fancy or glamorous. It  just plain simple - works!

Ready, here it is: Walk.

No excuses, just walk.

Walking in Three Phases

We will keep this very simple:

Phase One - Just walk. Get out there and walk. No rules, no techniques, just walk. You can grab your iPod or find a nature path or whatever you like, but just walk. If you’re really out of shape, walk around the block, or down the street, but walk a little distance. If you’re in decent shape, walk one mile at whatever pace you like. Try making it in less than 25 minutes, but take as much time as your body dictates. If you have access to a treadmill, that’s find too, but not necessary.

Phase Two - Walk and swing your arms. This will increase the effect tremendously. I’ve tested walking with swinging arms and without swinging arms with a calorie meter. I burn about 20% more calories when swinging my arms. Get some good motion, but keep it comfortable. Go at whatever pace you like, for whatever distance you can handle.

Phase Three - Pick up  the pace. I am assuming you are making it to one mile. If you’re not, then stay with phases one and two until you do. Picking up the pace means that if it is taking you 25 minutes to walk a mile, pick-up the pace to where it takes you 10% less time, or, 22-1/2 minutes.

Note: Always start walking at a comfortable or strolling pace and then pick it up. I walk slowly for 3-5 minutes when I start out and 3-5 minutes when I’m finishing up.

3. Super Simple Cool Down

Oh, this is so simple, just repeat the warm-up routine.

Eating Before and After Working Out

Simple Guidance:

• Wait 2 hours after a heavy meal
• Wait 1 hour after a light meal
• 45 minutes to 1 hour after working out - get some protein into your body, 10-20 grams through a protein bar or shake

This is a simple workout guide, but very effective. We are designed to walk and our legs can lead us to improved fitness in small doses.

This information is presented for educational value. Check with your doctor to be sure that you are fit enough for this routine. Always go slow and work you way up to longer distances.

For people who don’t have the time to workout and exercise

Waking up early and going to bed late - that seems to be a way of life. Weekends are for relaxing and catching up.  Finding time to exercise - come on, get real.

Well, maybe there’s a way. What if you could find a way for an easy at home workout that doesn’t take much time, or any additional time?

That’s why we’re here. Fitness in Small Doses will provide you with lots of ideas to improve your fitness without spending a lot of time doing it.

More and more research is finding that even a little bit of exercise, like walking, can improve your fitness and health. Recent findings are saying that you don’t need to workout for 30 minutes or an hour. Yes, any exercise that you get, even in the smallest doses adds up.

What will Fitness in Small Doses be covering?

We will be covering news, information, tips and plans on:

• Exercise
• Nutrition and Food
• Fitness
• Health
• Relaxing without Guilt
• Getting Fit at Work
• Family Activities
• Easy Fitness
• Lazy Fitness
• Exercise
• Equipment
• Lifestyle
• And much, much, more…

The guiding purpose for this site will always be to provide you with ideas that can be used right away. Most of what we suggest will cost nothing to very little. Some ideas will take a little money, but we will focus on getting the maximum return on your fitness investment.

So, check back often. Better yet, sign-up for our RSS Feed in the upper right hand corner of this page to receive updates every time we publish a new fitness article.

Get ready to set-up your fitness bank account and add to it in small doses.