exercise in increments?!

Absolutely! Exercise is exercise. Although Jillian Michaels disagrees, a study published in Preventive Medicine in 2006 proved that multiple workout sessions as short as 6 minutes apiece could help otherwise sedentary adults reach fitness goals similar to those achieved by working out for 30 minutes at a time.

The most important thing to do in those precious 10 or 15 minutes is make sure you get your heart rate up rapidly. When you're doing a long 45min workout you can stroll along 5min for your warm up and 5min for cool down, but when you're doing 10 or 15 minute bursts, you want to make those count. Cut the warm up or cool down to 1-2min on either end and work it hard for the other 8-13min. Although you're obviously not working out at a gym for those time periods, you can still work out just as hard, it'll just take more self discipline. Make sure you're working as hard as you would in a gym by grading yourself each time and writing it down. If you're breaking a sweat in those ten minutes, you're definitely on the right track!

You mentioned liking step aerobics, which I imagine you do using a DVD. There's another workout DVD I love from Amazon.com called Total Workout in 10! It has 4 workouts that are each 10min long. So you can do them all together or one or two at a time.

My gym membership is about to expire, so I'll be working out a lot at home also. I track my weight loss progress on Livestrong and on my blog. My link is below.

Good luck!

www.delightfulshrinking.com