Chicago ? Perhaps you’ve noticed them: the neighbor who uses walking lunges to get to the mailbox; the co-worker who sits on an exercise ball instead of a chair; or the family member who sprinkles ground flax seed on salads, cereal and ice cream.

They’re all part of the burgeoning Stealth Health movement, a subtle but simple new wellness trend designed to sneak healthy behavior into the lives of time-pressed Americans.

Stealth Health involves taking nonthreatening baby steps to incorporate permanent, positive lifestyle change. It’s blending silken tofu into cheesecake. It’s pressing your forehead into your palms while sitting for an isometric neck stretcher and strengthener. It’s deciphering labels and avoiding foods that contain trans-fatty acids or high-fructose corn syrup.

“We’ve long talked about the value of ounces of prevention, but with patients, that doesn’t sound so light and easy. It sounds like a lot of work,” said Dr. David Katz, a preventive-medicine specialist and director of Yale’s Prevention Research Center. “We thought, ‘What if we carved (good health habits) into tiny pieces and let people slip them into their lives one bit at a time?”‘

That germ of an idea sprouted into a comprehensive 415-page preventive-medicine bible by Katz and health writer Debra Gordon. The guide, called “Stealth Health: How to Sneak Age-Defying, Disease-Fighting Habits Into Your Life Without Really Trying” (Reader’s Digest, $14.95 paper), contains more than 2,400 easy lifestyle tweaks designed to “work health into the nooks and crannies of your life.”

The idea behind Stealth Health is to pick three new strategies and try them for four days in a row. Once a new behavior has become a regular part of the day, even if it’s something as small as drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning, add another.

These make up the Stealth Health Top 10 list for guaranteed health benefits:

¢ Drink a cup of tea in the morning.

¢ Walk for 30 minutes a day.

¢ Quit smoking.

¢ Have a glass of wine every evening.

¢ Take five minutes a day, close your eyes in a quiet room and practice deep breathing.

¢ Talk to a friend (whether in person on the phone or via e-mail) every day.

¢ Eat fish twice a week.

¢ Take a multivitamin with minerals.

¢ Eat whole, natural foods rather than boxed or processed foods.

¢ Get a good night’s sleep.

It may not be easy or possible to live by the Top 10, but Stealth Health preaches that small changes add up to a large difference.