Bernard O'Shea: 5 things to do in November for a head start on your New Year’s weight loss

Every year, I make the same promise: January is when I will sort myself out.

Small changes now mean you don’t spend January trying to undo December.  This year, November-Bernard is finally doing some groundwork. Not dramatic. Not glamorous. Not Instagrammable. Just enough to make January feel human again.

I picture this heroic future version of me jogging through frost, humming with discipline, radiating smugness. And every year, by January 3, I am back in my pyjamas eating the 'leftover' Celebrations — leftovers meaning 'the ones nobody in the house likes but I’m eating anyway because I’m weak'.

So this year, instead of waiting for the great cleanse of January 1, I asked someone sensible — Jill Taylor, fitness coach — what tiny things I could start doing now, in November and December, that wouldn’t make January feel like a punishment.