This Action Step is just as important as last week’s, in which you counted calories from your food. Weight loss comes down to calories, more specifically burning more calories than you eat. So, it only makes sense to track calories you burn in the same way you track calories you eat. It’s crucial to know what you’re burning daily to set up a successful plan of losing weight.

SparkPeople’s Fitness Tracker is easy to find and easy to use. Go to your start page and find Track Exercise on the left. Click and you’re there. The tracker contains dozens of exercises; simply search for your exercise, enter the number of minutes you exercised, and it will calculate your calories burned. If your exercise is not in the database, you can enter and save it manually, so it will appear in your database as an option in the future. With these simple steps, you have the ability to chart progress and compare your actual calories burned to your goal for the week. You can also track your strength training exercises on this page, using the SparkPeople generated programs, or by entering your own routine.

This Action Step is an opportunity to make exercise a regular part of your everyday routine. So many dieters only worry about what they’re eating, while exercise is at best a distant second priority. As the week goes on, you’ll see what a difference just 15-20 minutes of exercise can do for your calorie differential.