A lot of you want to make a change but don't know where to begin or think it's too much work. Here's an incredibly simple place to start: pay attention.

Look, you can blame McDonalds and fast food for the extra weight, or you can accept that you've made poor decisions about what, and how much you eat. The solution is simple… pay more attention to what goes in to your body. You don't have to obsess over it to see results, just pay attention.

Don't biggie size your Big Mac meal (1350 calories! That's 67% of a 2000 calorie daily recommended diet – in one meal). Instead, get the Big-N-Tasy meal with a parfait instead of fries, and tea (590 calories if you don't eat the granola). Fast food isn't the enemy, your choices are.

Here are some weapons for the battle: Calorie King and The Daily Plate For iPhone users there's a wonderful app called Restaurant Nutrition that lists many popular restaurants, their menu items, and their nutritional contents. It helps you answer an amazing question: “I'm at McDonalds. What on this menu is less than 500 calories?” Many restaurants are now providing nutrition information on their website too.

This advice isn't theory and hypothesis. I dropped 40 lbs a several years ago using this very simple practice, and all of that weight is still gone. I ate mostly fast food the entire time but made good decisions. I know you can do it too… I'm here to answer whatever questions you have.

Want to lose a few pounds? Just pay attention.

The desire for change came one day when my very good friend Bracken mused (paraphrasing): “It is really hard to watch what I eat when I'm with you all day. All you eat is cheeseburgers and fries.” Ouch. My wife and I had also just welcomed my son to the world. I thought about the example I would set for him, and I really, really didn't like it. Indeed, time for a change.

One thing I really dislike about exercise is pain. Are you with me? Maybe it is just my personality, but pain is bad, and I find no joy in it. I have friends that run marathons with 7,000 feet of vertical gain. Not for me.

When you hear how simple this is, you're going to laugh, and you might even laugh out loud. My goal when starting this experiment was to find something that I could never make an excuse to avoid. I would never take the time to go to a gym. I would never run. I needed something though.

It takes twenty-one days to form a habit. It takes easy to make it twenty-one days.

THE EASY PLAN. One plus.

I created a plan I could manage. I did three exercises one time, twice a day for two days. The third day, I moved up to two, twice a day for two days. The fifth day, I moved up to three. You get the picture… I kept going until I hit five a day. I did these right when I woke up, and just before bed – no excuses – even if I went to bed at 2 AM.

Then things changed; I'd been doing this for 10 days, and I was half way to a new habit. I started to increment one a day. The 12th day I did 6 twice a day, then 7 and so on. Before I knew it, my body felt different and I had more energy. In less than fourteen days, I was seeing the change I'd hoped for.

This is so easy, even I can do it.

The morning I started this plan, I was a little unsure of where it would go since it was so easy to start. By the time I was ready to try something else, I was at 262 – twice a day – 524 reps a day of these three exercises. I didn't do 262 in a row mind you. When I started out, I'd take a few seconds break between every 10. Then it was every 30, then every 50. By the time I got to 262, I was doing 100 at a time – so 100 twice, then 62.

I felt so good by then, I was also doing a bit of running. I was riding my bike for about 50 minutes at 16 to 17 miles per hour (a converted mountain bike, mind you) on Saturday mornings. Exercise was something I could do.

I can only speak from my experience, so if you decide to tweak the plan, you're on your own. It is so easy though, I really encourage you to do it just like I explained.

Want to give it a try? Here are some links to Expert Village videos. I chose these videos in particular because they're the exercises I did, I just didn't have these videos as a reference when I did it. On a side note, I do my sit ups and leg stretches with my arms crossed on my chest, but these methods are just fine.

Push Ups, Sit Ups, Double Straight Leg Stretch

If you try this, let me know how it works for you. Remove the thoughts “I can't” and replace them with “I'll try” and you'll succeed.