Willpower, that's all I want for Christmas

Tantrums and trainers.

HERE IT comes, then. Hurtling towards us like an enormous, aerodynamic Christmas pudding with all the raisins taken out, the festive season in all its brandy-sodden glory is bearing down upon the nation once again.

Every year I tell myself I will be good and every year, at some point during the festivities, this well-meaning but ultimately foolish proclamation gets tossed out the window along with the bad Christmas cracker jokes.

It is, after all, impossible to maintain a strict eating (and indeed drinking) routine when all around you folk are stuffing themselves full of cheap chocolates and cava like there's no tomorrow – which there may well not be if they keep that diet up for long.

Having said all that, however, so far this year I have done surprisingly well. I have not over-imbibed (much) and have avoided every chocolate that has been offered to me (apart from the ones in the chocolate advent calendar – but they don't count really, do they?)

I've even chosen the vegetarian options with no dessert at the two restaurant lunches I've had recently. Again, however, this is a classic mistake on my part. I get to the week before Christmas, think I've done exceedingly well because I haven't been out every night, forgetting of course that the real eating and drinking marathon is yet to come.

For the week that always tips any diet or exercise regime into the annals of oblivion is the one between Christmas and New Year. That foggy sort of time that seems to pass in a jolly, food-frenzied haze, where it seems perfectly normal to have a glass of Champagne at 9am, and eat a five-course lunch, and still somehow find room for "a snack" at 9pm. All of which would be marginally more acceptable if I was up at 8am the next morning, running round the block in order to make up for it. But for me the notion of exercise, of endless working out with weights and balls and bands, of conjuring up a dreadful sweat and crunching those abs into kingdom come, seems somehow terribly at odds with the season.

Therefore compromises (all right, excuses) have to be found. After all, not everything about the Christmas diet is unhealthy, is it?

I am one of these rare, strange creatures who actually likes eating sprouts, and love this time of year if only because they're so freely available in the shops. And if all else fails, there are always those healthy little tangerines at the bottom of the stockings. It's just a shame they go so well with that glass of Champagne…

• IN TWO WEEKS' TIME: My new year fitness resolutions