You’re tired of what you see in the mirror. Your clothes don’t fit and your struggling to button your shirt. You feel as big as a whale and you probably even feel a little sick.

You’re sick and tired of being sick and tired and you’re ready to make a change! Your motivation is sky high and you know you can lose all of the extra pounds you’ve been carrying around! This time you’re really going to do it!

And then it hits you… you have to go to the gym. And just like that your plans for slimming down and getting healthy have been put on hold. Because you probably thought to yourself, “I can’t go to the gym. I’m not like those people. Look at me! Look at them! I just don’t belong.”

All hope is lost. Or is it?

No. It is not. The truth of the matter is all you have to do is sweat the small stuff!

You can start losing the pounds you so desperately want to shed just by making two small changes to your daily routine: parking in the back of the lot and taking the stairs. It really is that easy.

Both helped me lose 260 pounds and more importantly, helped me keep it off.

Park and Walk

You’ll find that unless it’s a grocery store or shopping mall during the holidays there’s a solid chance you’ll be able to find a parking space close to the entrance. That’s what most of us covet.

But the back of the lot is where it’s at. You don’t have to worry about carts slamming into your door or people parking too close to you. For this is a true parking oasis. And it’s where you can really burn a lot of calories without thinking.

I calculated by parking in the last available space at my office I was walking an extra mile each week. Over the course of the year that amounted to burning more than 5,000 calories or two-and-a-half days worth of food!

If you apply the same philosophy wherever you go you’ll burn even more!

Take the Stairs

Every time you take the elevator or escalator you’re forfeiting an opportunity to burn a ton of calories. Don’t throw the chance away for the sake of convenience.

We burn about five calories every time we walk up a flight of stairs, according to the University of New Mexico. That’s huge!

Taking just 10 flights of stairs each day you will burn an extra 50 calories and you don’t even have to do it all at the same time. Spread out the flights over the course of the day to make it less of a chore.

If you stick to it and make it a routine, over the course of a year you will burn more than 18,000 calories!

It Adds Up

Combining your new parking and stair-taking habits amounts to burning about 23,000 calories each year.

But really… how much is that?

• Pizza Hut: 8.5 large cheese pan pizzas
• Taco Bell: 138 crunchy tacos
• Burger King: 36 Whoppers
• Haagen Daze: 28 pints of vanilla ice cream
• KFC: 180 fried chicken legs

Each of those amount to 23,000 calories and you just burned them off without even thinking!

While others may roll their eyes, this will simply become your new healthy normal. So, take pity on the naysayers and comfort in your slimmer waist.