You don’t have to subsist on celery sticks to slim down quickly. To shed half a kilo in a week, most women need to burn about 14 000 more kilojoules than they take in–that’s 2 000kJ a day. While that may seem like a lot, little trade-offs add up fast.

Still skeptical? Follow this and we guarantee you’ll be lighter by the weekend.

Diet tweaks

• Have eggs in the morning. A recent Saint Louis University study found that people who ate eggs as part of their breakfast consumed about 686 fewer kilojoules throughout the day than those who had a bagel with cream cheese.

• Order the lunch combo. Instead of your regular turkey on wheat, have a small broth-based soup and half of that sandwich. The soup will fill you up–and save you 1046 kJ or more.

• Downsize your drink. Order a kilojoule-free tea or coffee with a splash of nonfat milk in place of your usual medium chai tea or lowfat latte, each of which contains roughly 837 kilojoules.

• Snack smarter. Have half a cup of light ice cream or a lowfat bar in lieu of a scoop of the premium version (you’ll save 962 kilojoules and 21 grams of fat). Or nosh on a 418-kilojoule pack of popcorn instead of chips and dip to trim 879 kilojoules and 17 fat grams.

• Pare down your pie. Order the thin-crust pizza with half the cheese instead of the deep dish variety to slash 1172 kilojoules and 12 grams of fat per slice.

• Ban the bread basket. Just one roll with butter contains 1310 kilojoules and 19 grams of fat.

• Order a substitute. At brunch, trade in the hash browns for fruit and opt for the turkey bacon instead of the sausage to save 1029 kilojoules and 26 grams of fat.

Exercise moves

• Take the stairs. Clock a total of 30 minutes throughout the day and you’ll climb off 966 kilojoules.

• Say om. Pop in a 45-minute power yoga, vinyasa, or ashtanga DVD. In addition to decompressing, you’ll burn at least 1046 kilojoules.

• Sign up for a class. At the gym, take the hour-long body sculpting class rather than breezing through your usual 30-minute free weights routine. You’ll challenge your muscles in a new way–and sweat off an additional 1113 kilojoules.

• Clean house. Crank up Taylor Swift or Linkin Park and give your home a complete scrubdown. All that sweeping and dusting will help you blast up to 1113 kilojoules an hour.

• Meet up for a stroll. Instead of gabbing over cocktails, convince a friend to power walk around the park with you for 45 minutes. Each of you will burn 1255 kilojoules.

• Hit the dance floor (or your living room!). Shake and shimmy for 45 minutes to shave 1113 kilojoules from your daily tally.

• Play a video game…on a Nintendo Wii, that is. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in LaCrosse found that playing the boxing game for 30 minutes torches about 904 kilojoules, while the tennis version burns 665 kilojoules.