diary will keep you monitored and motivated in scheduling your weekly sessions and in recording your progress. Keep focusing on how much better you feel and why you are doing this. Within just a few months, exercise will be as natural as eating and sleeping. If not shouting so much at the children is your New Year resolution for 2010, you're in good company. It's the main wish for more than 90 per cent of parents I work with. My top tip for immediate improvements? Interact with your children as you'd interact with a colleague. You'd never shriek at a workmate: 'What do you mean you've forgotten to do that report? Go and do it now!' So tell yourself: 'I am not going to shout at my children like that either', and speak to them as you'd like to be spoken to. Remember, you always have a choice in how you behave in any situation with any person. Yes, you can raise your voice, but you can also lower it. You can erupt or close your eyes and count to ten. Give yourself the chance to make that choice. Before doing anything, ask yourself: 'Will I regret later what I am about to do?' FAT CHANCE Women will give up their post- Christmas diet six days into the New Year - eight days earlier than men Also, identify your triggers  -  those 'hot spots' that make you see red. We all have them. Is it tripping over toys, lost PE