There is only one way to lose weight: you have to use up more energy than you take in. In other words, eat less food, or take more exercise - or both. Most experts recommend both, because exercise is so good for your overall health. But not everyone wants to pound the pavements in a sweaty singlet, pump iron in the gym or bounce around in a leotard in aerobics class. And you don't have to! You can still get great benefits with "incidental exercise" - exercise that's slotted in, in small bites, whenever you get the chance.

Of course, if you go running every morning or work out at the gym seven days a week, you're going to see faster results. But a gentler approach to exercise can actually pay bigger dividends in the long run. You see, (as I explain in my article on Staying Slim Forever), losing the weight is only half the battle. If you don't change the eating and exercise patterns that made you fat in the first place, you won't be able to keep the weight off - it will all creep back on again. It may take a year or two, but it will happen.

So, rather than embarking on some extreme fitness regime that you'll abandon with glee once the diet is over, it makes much more sense to choose an exercise that you can keep on doing for the rest of your life, painlessly.

"Oh," you say, "I've heard all this before. But walking takes too long - I can't spare an hour a day to walk around the block."

I don't blame you, and that's not what I'm talking about! Of course, if you can find the time for a long, brisk walk, it will do you the world of good - but what I'm talking about is 10,000 steps a day. Not all at once, and not even very brisk - just one foot in front of the other. The total includes every step you take - walking from your laundry to your kitchen, or down to the corner store, or walking around the supermarket. And it's not as daunting as you think (I racked up 3,000 steps just shopping for a special-occasion dress at the mall last Saturday!).

The program works because it's so simple. There are no complicated rules to follow, no worrying whether you're doing the exercises right, no remembering complicated moves. You don't have to pay joining fees, or wear special clothes, or get hot and sweaty. You just have to grab every opportunity you can, to walk.

Every extra step means you're burning more calories, so the 10,000 step program will help your weight loss. What's more important, it greatly increases the chance that you'll keep the weight off, because it changes your mindset. We're all so intent on saving time and labor, we actively avoid lots of small exercise opportunities every single day - things that our parents and grandparents did without thinking (which is why they were mostly thinner and fitter than we are today!).

When you start the 10,000 step program, you'll find you no longer want to avoid those "micro-exercises". In fact, you'll start looking for the chance to add to your step total! Because taking a few extra steps here and there doesn't take much effort, the program is easy to do and easy to maintain - and before you know it, it's become a habit that you'll keep on doing for life, without even thinking about it.

There are all kinds of ways to increase your steps, and most of them take very little, if any, extra time. Here are some of the habits I changed to reach my 10,000 daily steps:

• If I need to talk to someone who works in the same office as me, I don't email or phone - I get up and go to their desk (and I take the stairs, not the elevator).
• When I go to the mall, I don't drive round and round and round looking for a prime parking space close to the entrance - I make straight for the empty spots at the far end, and walk. It actually saves me time!
• I take the stairs, not the escalator, at the subway station. If I have to take the escalator, I walk up it.
• I live in a townhouse, and used to collect a little pile of stuff at the bottom of the staircase so I only had to climb the stairs once. Now if I have to take something upstairs, I take it.
• If I have spare time in my lunch hour, I spend it window-shopping (in bad weather) or I go for a walk in the park.
• I get off the train at the station before my normal stop.

That last idea is an "old chestnut", and it's often easier said than done, if there's a long gap between train stations or bus stops. But don't give up too easily - it's worth thinking laterally before you decide it's impossible.

For instance, I travelled by bus to my previous job. There was no way I was getting off a stop earlier - that would have meant walking all the way across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and that's a long way! I couldn't walk to the next stop at the beginning of my trip, either - it was an Express bus, and my stop was the last one before it took the freeway.

What I did, in the end, was walk to the previous bus stop at the start of my trip. At first glance, it seemed crazy to be walking in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go - but the bonus was, by getting on the bus earlier, I was able to get a seat and didn't have to stand all the way to the city!

I'm sure you'll be able to think up other easy ways to increase your total. I know one mother who walks her child to school instead of driving, which means her daughter gets some exercise too. If I get myself organized (which isn't very often!), I spread my food shopping over the week so that come Saturday, I can walk down to the village to shop, because the load will be small enough to carry. Some of my friends have set up a mothers' walking club and walk every afternoon, with their strollers (they always finish up at a cafe for tea and cake, so I'm not sure it's all that good for weight loss, though!!).

It's worth choosing your pedometer carefully, because it's going to be your constant companion for a long time.

It doesn't have to be fancy - in fact, it's better if it's not. All you want to count is steps. You don't want to start tracking calories burned, or miles travelled - that's just going to muddy your goal. Those measurements aren't that accurate anyway, because they rely on knowing your exact length of stride, which is hard to measure precisely.

Much more important is size and shape - you want a flat shape with a big clip to hold it securely in position. The flat shape is especially important for women, because often the best place for a woman to wear her pedometer is on her underwear, especially if she's wearing a dress or a skirt with a soft waistband! It must sit on your waist or hip, so there's no point clipping it to a blouse or t-shirt.

For the same reason, choose a pedometer with a reset button that's recessed or tucked into the side. Many pedos have the reset button on the front or on top, and if you're wearing it under your clothes, it will be constantly resetting and losing all your hard-earned steps.

All text copyright Marisa Wright.

Walkers' photo with thanks to Karen T2008.  Pedometer photo courtesy of Tellumo.  Both on Flickr.com