If you are making small changes, you are more likely to keep them up. On your “Health Maintenance Calendar,” choose exercise goals that are very small and reasonable. It's best to take it very slowly, so you don't get discouraged, so add an exercise goal about every other month or so. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Choose one activity that you really love. Walking, swimming, biking, dancing — whatever is fun for you and accessible. Find a way to do it for twenty minutes at least three times a week for a month. Mark it on the calendar when you do the activity, and notice how you feel at the end of the month.

• Take the stairs at work.

• Try an activity that you've always wanted to, or know you enjoy, with a buddy. Ask a work friend to walk on your lunch hour, take salsa dancing with a friend, go kayaking, bike around a lake. Just give your body something new to do, and mark it on your calendar.

• Walk around the block every day at lunchtime.

• Incorporate some stretching routine for a month. Take a Tai Chi class or do yoga for fifteen minutes in the morning, up to three times a day.

If you start using your body more than you have in the past, it will start to respond and “ask” you to move more. The combination of small diet changes and small activity changes can make you feel better even if your weight remains constant.