WE'VE all done it! December comes around and the festivities are well under way. You give yourself permission to go off the rails, eating and drinking with reckless abandon. Next thing, it's January 1 and you're feeling bloated, tired, constipated, heavy, depressed, cranky and generally rubbish.

Then come the New Year’s resolutions where you promise yourself to be a better person, work smarter not harder and build the body of your dreams. The first week is a resounding success as you wake up at 5am, get that early morning gym session in and eat salad every day for lunch.

And then slowly but surely as the weeks go on all of those old habits and patterns come creeping back in and before you know it your New Year’s resolution is just something you wrote on the white board in the study, which has now been replaced with next week’s shopping list.

So here's the thing: January 1 is not special. Nothing magical happens then. It's admirable that you want to make a change and you deserve every success, so why not give yourself the best chance? Instead of setting an audacious goal which immediately has you panicking, think about the little daily habits you can do which, when done consistently over time, will create long lasting success.

So let's make a start. Find something you know you can do for the next seven days, for example, drink two to three litres of water every day. Once you have that down and it's no longer a forced habit, then you can move on to the next one.

That's how you make permanent change. No more resolutions needed.