When you've got a sedentary job or are needing to do more exercise to lose weight, look for any excuse for a walk.

Any destination that's within 20-30 minutes can become an excuse for a health stretch of the legs making a 40-60 minute round trip.

• Need milk? - walk to the store.
  
• Walk together to the movies - you can review it together on the way home.
  
• Need cash from the ATM - walk there for it.
  
• Take a pre-work walk to get a surprise treat for the kids' lunchbox from the bakery.
  
• Close enough to walk to work - do it.
  
• Park in the far corner of the carpark.
  
• Walk around the field while your kids are at sports practice.
• Use the stairs instead of the lift.

It's usually during Winter that extra weight sneaks on. And not surprisingly Winter is when many of us are least active. To address this we MUST find either the motivation to exercise in the cold and rain OR find an exercise for the Winter that avoids the weather.

Some options include:
1) Hiring or buying exercise equipment.  You can set it up in a garage, spare room or lounge and then no matter the weather, you have a work out ready to go.  You can opt for treadmills, exercycles, rowing machines or if you have neither the space or budget for large items you can opt for a skipping rope, an aerobic step or even an exercise DVD.
2) Joining a Winter sports team or league.  Soccer, netball, basketball hockey  ... whatever it is, by signing up to a team you've made a commitment and a social contract to turn up for practices and games.  If team sports aren't you thing, there's also badminton and squash clubs that you can sign up to or even the local Zumba class.
3) Joining a gym for the six coldest months of the year.  If you're not usually a gym bunny, joining the gym just for the winter months can be a good option.  Check out your local gyms for one that has a six month membership.  Then when Spring/Summer comes you're carrying less weight and can revert to your favourite outdoor exercises.
or
4) Getting a dog that needs walking every day.  There's nothing like the pleading puppy-dog eyes to get you up out and walking rain or shine.

Meet My Weight Loss Pal... it's an iPhone App actually called "My Fitness Pal" but don't let that put you off it's great.

Managing weight is all about balancing the energy-in/energy-out equation right?  But if you're anything like me you hate calorie counting!!

My Fitness Pal is brilliant for two reasons: 1) it does all the calorie counting for you through an amazing database with so many foods right down to specific brands including lots of New Zealand's most popular brands like Watties, Anchor, Molenberg etc. You simply find the food in the database and indicate how much you've had and it calculates the calories and adds it to your daily log. It has all your frequent items in a list so after a couple of days it takes no time at all to log your food.
2) The second reason I love My Fitness Pal is that it's based on Nett calories. That's right nett calories - any cardio based exercise counts as negative calories so you can eat more and still be on target. It's a great motivation tool because if you exceed your target you're can get up and go for a walk or pull out a skipping rope for 20 minutes or so and bring yourself back on track.

Best of all "My Fitness Pal" is FREE so look for it on iTunes App Store or go to www.myfitnesspal.com (may also available on Android).