10,000 Steps a day

The Food Pyramid:

If there is one new message today's pyramid is shouting the loudest, it's that we should not view a healthy diet in terms of food alone.

While experts have always touted the benefits of exercise.

The new pyramid, complete with a figure running up the side over a set of steps, is there to remind us that healthy eating and exercise are now married for life.

Essentially the message here is move your body.

The goal is to remind us of the importance of making movement a part of our everyday life and not just something we reserve for an hour once or twice a week at a gym," says Jyni Holland, MS, RD, co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weight Loss Tracker.

While for most people even just the word "exercise" conjures up images of expensive equipment and pricey personal trainers.

Getting in our now-requisite quota of "daily moves" does not have to mean plunking down big bucks to sweat in a room filled with perfect strangers.

"The goal is for each of us to take 10,000 steps a day -- and you can do that by simply getting off the bus two blocks before your stop, taking the stairs for a few flights, and bypassing the parking spot closest to the mall and looking for a space three or four rows back.

Even doing routine housework like washing windows or vacuuming or mowing the lawn or pulling weeds -- these are the 'real life' ways to incorporate exercise into our daily living.

A pedometer can keep track of your number of steps and help motivate you to keep going.