You know the feeling - that once upon a time nice flat tummy has begun to bulge just a tad too much around the belt-line region.

The favourite jeans you love have become a little tight and suddenly you realize you’ve barely thought about exercising with all the extra work you’ve taken on at the office.

Those business lunches and late dinners are beginning to show. You’ve probably been far too busy with other stuff to keep up with the exercises you’d promised yourself to do each day and now the small of your back is starting to ache.

Frankly your abs are out of control and you feel like a sack of potatoes tied up in the middle!

Welcome to the club, but don’t feel badly about it. Lots of people go through this - the good news is that without being depressed about it, they and you can get back into shape again, without having to go frantically into an exercise frenzy working out twenty-four hours a day for the next few weeks. In reality you don’t have to spend hours on end at the gym or exercising to keep in good shape.

Once you’ve got your exercise sessions under control again, all you really need is ten minutes a day along with nutritious and healthy eating habits to keep the ever lurking abs flab at bay.

As it’s not always easy in an everyday busy work schedule to fit in a full exercise session at the gym, where you perhaps just have 30 minutes, which would hardly give you time enough to warm up and cool off, which means you risk pulling ligaments, spraining and all kinds of nasty stuff that could lay you up for weeks on end.

No point in making exercising more difficult than it really is, so here are a few ways that virtually anyone can use to supplement workout sessions:

• Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Stair climbing is great aerobics and will get your blood pumping in short order

• Do you use public transport i.e. subway, bus, metro - taxi? Try getting up just a little earlier and jogging or walking some of the distance - say one or two stops. You could easily have your job-shoes with you to change on arrival. Enjoy some early morning fresh air. Puts you in a good mood for the day and does wonders for your figure too.

• Have a garden? Cut the grass with an ordinary lawn-mower, not the ’sit-on-and-ride’ mower. Dig the cabbage-patch, pull up the weeds, rake up the leaves - smell the roses. All of these tasks are both enjoyable and will help keep you fit as a fiddle as well as give you a well kept, wonderful garden.

• Live within walking or jogging distance to the shops? Instead of taking the car to shop, why not walk or jog there and carry your purchases home, or walk/jog part of the way.

• If you have a housekeeper, you have time to get to the gym. If you’re like most people then the drudge of cleaning can be turned around to your advantage. While scrubbing and polishing the floors, sweeping the hallways, washing down kitchen cupboards, cleaning windows or the car - all go towards giving you a great full body workout.

In almost every thing we do on a daily basis from washing the car to buying the weekend shopping, from dusting to working at your computer - there are quick and easy ways to exercise.