I am no revolutionary when I say that the benefits of healthy eating are greatly enhanced by physical exercise. I know I feel like a caged animal if I haven’t had at least one chance to run around outside for a while each day. So it’s not just about looking good but about feeling good too.

To counter our ever more sedentary lifestyles, sitting as most of us do for hours each day, we pound the pavements, invest in expensive all-weather cycling gear, spin like hamsters on wheels in extortionately expensive, sweaty basements, and stack our bookshelves with yoga videos which promise us the flat stomachs of our teenage years.

But this attitude of the more arduous and intense the better is not the solution. Our time is too pressured to stick to these regimes for very long. Those 5.30am starts soon make us tired at the end of the day, our ankles begin to niggle and the sky is just too grey to consider a bike ride after work. Short-term gains are squandered in the inevitable slump into inactivity that follows.

This is binge exercising. Much better than this is to change the way you go about your daily routine. Simply build in unavoidable activity, take pleasure in it, see it as a reward for the times you’re stuck in the office and not as punishment for over-indulging the rest of the time.

Ten easy steps to get in shape:  

1. Set your alarm fifteen minutes earlier each morning.

2. On waking, stretch your arms to the ceiling, and touch your toes. Stretch your chest and back, by putting your hands together behind your back and pushing out your rib cage, and then putting your hands together in front of you and rounding your back.

3. If possible, cycle or walk to work, not in a “I’m about to become the next Bradley Wiggans” way, but wearing normal clothes and at a decent pace. If that’s not possible, either walk a stop further to the bus or tube, or get off a stop earlier. If you drive, simply park your car further away. This will add no more than ten minutes to your journey.

4. Do the same on the way home – two stops, if you have the time. It will clear your head and stimulate your appetite for dinner.

5. Fit in a fifteen minute walk at lunchtime, whatever the proximity of your favourite cafe and whatever the weather. I wouldn’t be surprised if you find a park just round the corner, but traipsing the streets is equally effective.

6. Always walk briskly. If your shoes don’t allow it, then keep them in your bag and wear more sensible ones until you get to where you need to be. When getting off airplanes, you should aim to be the first in the passport queue every time. If you’re meeting a friend on the South Bank, there’s no need to get the tube. Walk quickly through town instead.

7. Never stand on escalators, however tired you’re feeling. If a station or shop has stairs, next to the escalators or lift (as at Russell Square), take those. Run up as many stairs as you can, and walk the rest. With time you’ll find you can run up more than you could before – very satisfying.

8. Seize every opportunity for movement that comes your way. Offer to make the tea, to pop to the shops to buy the papers, to fetch the post from the front door, to take the plates to the kitchen.

9. Enjoy the feeling of bursting into a run at least once a day – for a bus, after a child in the park, round the corner to pick up forgotten lemons for the evening’s salad dressing.

10. If time and money permit, introduce at least one official ‘exercise’ hour into your week – a swim, a yoga class, a Sunday morning run, a tennis lesson. The chances are you’ll find this so pleasurable you’ll start seeking out opportunities to fit in more.

And the perfect pre-exercise snack? 

A big juicy medjool date, fresh from the fridge. The taste when cold is so intense, you will think you are eating fudge.