Take inventory of your movements throughout the day. Awareness is important to facilitate improvement. How much of your day are you sitting? How much of your day is spent looking at a screen?

• Set mindful movement goals. Creating a mindful living plan is the first step in crafting these goals.

• An activity journal can help you increase your awareness of your activity levels and once you set your activity goals, can help you stay on track. It doesn’t need to be fancy: keep a small notebook in your bag or keep a word doc on your desktop that you can use to record your daily activities.

• Most people who want to lose weight need to get at least five hours of moderate physical activity each week. This may sound like a lot, especially if you are not currently getting much exercise. Take heart: These levels don’t need to be reached overnight. You can build up slowly.

• It may be helpful for you to monitor your activity by wearing a pedometer and try to accumulate 10,000 steps a day eventually.

• Start with an initial goal of two and a half hours of exercise each week. It can seem daunting at first, but building up slowly helps you get into a routine, and before you know it you’ll feel like something is missing from your day when you don’t get your exercise in.

• By increasing your activity and cutting back on calories, you create an overall calorie deficit.  A 500–1,000 calorie a day deficit translates to losing one to two pounds a week. 

• Here’s how:  To create an overall calorie deficit of 500 calories in a day, you can burn about 300 calories more than usual by walking about three miles (one mile generally equals 100 calories) and cut back on what you eat by about 200 calories by skipping a bag of chips or a bottle of sugar-sweetened soda.

** Of course, you can do other combinations. And to get up to 1,000 calories a day deficit, you just increase both sides of the equation: get more activity and cut back on more calories. However you do it, it’s important to be sensible. Weight loss isn’t a sprint; it’s a continuous journey.

Remember:

Choose activities you like..

• Biking
• Hiking
• Rowing
• Kayaking
• Yoga
• Pilates
• Dance
• Swimming
• Mindful Movements with Thich Nhat Hanh- a guided DVD
• You can find more activity ideas in our links section.

Exercise can be incorporated into your daily routine…

• Take the stairs
• Walk with a coworker for a short break
• Stretch in the morning and at night and in between meetings, it will help you feel more active and sleep better
• Ride public transportation. Its good for the environment and forces you to walk more
• Walk to the grocery store, carrying a couple bags back is great exercise too!
• Play with your kids- tag, hide and go seek- great for your heart, mind and body

For more information, ideas and inspiration on mindful moving, reference Chapter 6 of Savor.

Pleas share with me- how did you incorporate mindful movement in to your life today?