Move more and eat better in 2011 using these seven simple strategies:

1. Mix it up. The big trend in fitness isn’t one thing, it’s everything. Avoid drudgery, avoid stressing the same muscles and work your entire body by doing a variety of workouts. “Incorporating several different forms of exercise in a training program can be an excellent way to develop the various components of fitness,” according to the American Council on Exercise. If your goal is to lose weight, varying your exercise regimen — walking one day, lifting weights the next, taking a Zumba class after that — keeps your muscles from becoming too efficient at any one exercise and thus burning fewer calories.

2. Find what works. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it. Think, personal trainers advise, about what you like to do, or what you liked to do in the past. Did you love riding your bike as a kid? A preponderance of fun-to-ride bikes — from the aptly named “comfort” bikes to speedier and more aggressive urban bikes — has flooded the market, and with nearly 150 miles of greenway in the Triangle, it’s easy for the grown-up you to rekindle your childhood love. Or maybe you get so caught up in the joy of dance you don’t realize you’ve had a good workout until the following morning. Zumba, dance exercise with a Latin zing, and Nia, a marriage of dance, the martial arts and the “healing arts,”  are two popular dance options.

3. Eat smart, eat simple. It’s a paradox, but the more we learn about food, the poorer we seem to eat. Good-eating advocate and author Michael Pollan writes in his latest book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” “for all the scientific and pseudoscientific food baggage we’ve taken on in recent years, we still don’t know what we should be eating.” Pollan, whose “In Defense of Food” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” were both best-sellers, doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but his “Food Rules” offers 64 succinct suggestions for common-sense eating. They range from “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food” to “Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle” (fresh food generally lines the walls, processed foods are in the aisles). Some suggestions are only a sentence; none takes up more than a page.

4. Try the unthinkable. Running, for instance. Few exercises elicit a more visceral negative reaction than running. Yet an increasing number of people who find their metabolism slowing as they pass 40 are turning to running as a way to keep the pounds off. Consider: A 170-pound person who walks three miles in an hour will burn 337 calories; that same person will burn more than twice that many calories (775) running six miles in an hour. One reason running doesn’t seem as arduous anymore: an explosion of walk-to-run programs. A walk-to-run 5K program takes nonrunners and, over the course of 12 weeks, converts their walks into runs to the point that they can run an entire 5K (3.1 miles).

5. It’s a lifestyle, not a quick fix. There’s a reason programs such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and TOPS have been around so long while the all-grapefruits-all-the-time diet fads quickly fade. Fad diets — promising fast results based on a quick fix — may work in the short term, but once you’ve dropped that 20 pounds, you’re back to your old, bad habits. Programs that focus on changing behavior have a better chance of helping you lose weight and keep it off. According to WebMD.com, a healthy weight-loss program should include a daily minimum of 1,000 to 1,200 calories for women and 1,200 to 1,600 for men; promote slow, gradual weight loss, generally 1 to 2 pounds a week; offer flexibility in food offerings; and not cut back on your recommended daily allowance of vitamins, minerals and proteins.

6. Find a support group. Look at it as misery loves company, if you must, but knowing you’re not alone in any challenge can make a difference. According to the Mayo Clinic, “A support group can help you cope better and feel less isolated as you make connections with others facing similar challenges.” In a convenience store getting hit on by Little Debbies? A fellow dieter who can talk you down is just a cell phone call away. And for those times after a long day of work when you don’t think you have the strength for Pilates? The guilt of knowing your classmates are gutting it out should be enough to get your butt in gear.

7. Persevere. Losing weight, moving more and adopting a healthier lifestyle aren’t easy. It won’t happen, in a healthy way, over night. And studies have shown that most resolutions fall by the wayside before January is over. But if you slip up, don’t throw in the towel. According to a study by the University of Scranton, 71 percent of people surveyed who achieved their resolution slipped up at least once (and usually early on, in January). So you miss a day at the gym or a seductive slice of cheesecake crushes your vow of no desserts? Look at why you slipped up — maybe five days a week at the gym is too much with your schedule, maybe one dessert a week isn’t a bad thing — and adjust if you think it will help you reach your goal, and carry on.

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I was reminded of this earlier in the week on a ride at Umstead with Alan. The discussion turned to how we’d both been stressed by money, money that we knew was coming in but money that had yet to arrive. Ah, the joys of being self-employed. Alan had gotten to the point one evening where he started digging through his bike bag for spare change for dinner. “I was sick of eating at home. I wanted a burrito, [dang it]!”

“How much have you been riding lately?” I asked.

Not nearly enough, he acknowledged. Then, with a gleam, he added, “I did come out here Sunday, though, and rode hard for an hour. I think that ride saved me this week.”

When the going gets tough, the tough get on their bikes and ride, hard.

Few things relieve the pressure valve like moving. For some, that may mean fleeing the cube for a mind-clearing 20-minute walk around the campus. For others, it’s an inspiring, perspiring 50-minute Nia class after work. For people like Alan and I, it’s an intense, heart-pumping ride though the forest, darting between trees, over rocks, beneath branches.

This morning after I’d gotten back from the computer store having bought a software upgrade that refused to work, and after being told, “Yeah, there’s a problem with that upgrade; They’re working on a fix. In the meantime, here’s a patchwork solution that will save your data. Well, most of it … ”, and after being advised that the patchwork fix could tie up my computer for up to three hours, I had only one course of action.

And it didn’t involve fire roads.

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Recess, which was abandoned in our grade schools about the time EOCs began dominating the academic landscape, is being pushed as a key way to help a sluggish, overweight America get its supersized butt in gear. The notion of Instant Recess, which is embraced by the recently formed U.S. National Physical Activity Plan,  activity during the workday is better than staying parked in your ergonomic chair for 8 hours. Thus, employers are being encouraged to conduct 10 minute recess sessions where workers can gather and elevate their heart rates in a healthy way. It’s creator, Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor in UCLA’s School of Public Health, is confident Instant Recess will take hold.

“In five years, Instant Recess will be in Congress, churches, waiting rooms,” Yancey told the Washington Post. “Once the opportunity is available, people will take it.”

There’s little doubt that some people will take it, those people being mostly women. I draw very few generalizations when it comes to exercise, but one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that women are much more open to embracing the new and unusual. Example: I’m currently reporting a story on Nia, a workout that’s dance-based and asks only that you drop your inhibitions and let yourself go. In the two classes I’ve attended, there have been two men — and one of them abandoned with 10 minutes left on the clock. While I thoroughly enjoyed the workout I took part in, I’m also quick to admit that I probably wouldn’t have tried Nia if I weren’t writing about it. What can I say: I’m a bottled-up guy. A guy likely to roll my eyes come Instant Recess time.

There’s also the notion of forced exercise to contend with. To many Americans, group exercise carries the baggage of a grade school gym teacher who took delight in seeing the weaker ones among us crack when confronted with the dread climbing rope. And who hasn’t cringed at video clips of Chinese workers loosening up en masse to Chairman/Coach Mao’s sweat-‘til-you’re-Red workouts?

Perhaps a bigger challenge to Instant Recess, though, is how it’s presented in the workplace. Twenty workplaces have already signed up for Instant Recess: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the YMCA and AARP among them. Alas, those organizations’ mission is helping people live healthier, happier lives. When it comes to the typical widget-producing operation, I can’t help but think that Instant Recess will meet a fate similar to “The Office” 5K Fun Run, right down to the nipple chaffing. If the boss — a boss who’s already drowning under a blizzard of directives from corporate — isn’t on board, expect the rank-and-file to follow suit. (Or worse, imagine Instant Recess in the hands of a boss like Michael Scott who thinks he’s on board.)

Instant Recess isn’t a bad idea, it’s simply one idea. For some, it will work. But for the self-conscious, the reluctant, the male, there need to be options. Options such as more flexible work hours. Rather than prescribing a time and place to workout, a growing number of employers, especially in the high tech sector, worry less about whether employees can be tracked from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. than whether they get their work done. Come in at 7:30, take an hour at lunch to run, leave at 5:30? No problem, as long as the Pensky File is on the boss’s desk by morning. Subsidizing onsite exercise classes is a good idea as well.

And frankly, while 10 minutes is better than nothing, it’s not nearly enough. Nothing is more frustrating than doing what you think is the healthy thing only to reap none of the benefits. For most, that means losing weight, and if you’re just working out for 10 minutes, you’ll be doing some good for your body, but you won’t lose weight. And that’s a problem, because when it comes to the bottom line Instant Recess is about one thing.

Downsizing.

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“You want to create that sensation where your body says, ‘Ah … thank you!” I heard that phrase this morning from instructor Julie Ihrig during the cool down of my first Nia workout at the Cary Senior Center. It had been preceded by a string of other phrases that would have made a litany of aerobics instructors, boot camp leaders and personal trainers throughout the land wince:

Notice your face. Perhaps its telling you of joy and pleasure …

It’s all about the pleasure principle.

Honor where your body is today.

A workout that’s good for you and makes your body and mind happy? What’s this Nia all about? My print persona (The News & Observer, Charlotte Observer) is working on a story about Nia, which is scheduled to appear next week and which will run the following day in this space. Can’t wait? Go here.

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