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Follow the 14-day eating plan and you’ll soon be looking and feeling better. But for total health, vitality and successful weight loss, one crucial part of the jigsaw is still missing – exercise. Physical activity raises resting metabolism, increases calorie-hungry lean body mass, and improves your body’s ability to burn fat as a fuel.

For convenience and simplicity, the aerobic exercise featured in the 14-day plan is simply walking. It’s not only good for your figure but your health, too – recent research has shown that regular walking for as little as an hour a week is associated with lower incidence of heart disease in women. In the plan you will find that 10- to 30-minute bouts of walking are suggested at specific times during the day, but if you really can’t fit them in, then stick to one daily walk. Some research shows that doing repeated bouts of exercise actually burns more calories than doing one prolonged session, due to the effect of exercise on metabolism, but the overall rule is to be as active as you can, as often as you can. There are daily step targets to aim for, to provide a guide to how much walking you need to do during the 14 days to get results. You’ll need a pedometer – these are available for $10–$35 from good athletic equipment stores.

The daily walking is complemented by a targeted 10-minute home routine of abdominal and core stability exercises to tone up your abdominals and improve posture, all helping you to streamline your silhouette.

Alongside the walking and core exercises, try to find time to fit more “lifestyle” activity into each of the 14 days. These are activities that can be easily incorporated into your day and don’t require you to get into your gym clothes and sneakers. Here are some everyday tasks that will help increase calorie expenditure.

Burn 100 calories without exercising by …

Shopping for half an hour

Gardening for 20 minutes

Dancing for 20 minutes

Making the bed 5 days a week

Walking up stairs for 10 minutes

Cooking for 40 minutes

Cleaning for 25 minutes