The road is paved with good intentions — less booze, less lard, no more dirty cigarettes, lots more exercise. So is your life now cleansed of toxic evils? Or does a quick glance around the office reveal the same harried faces that always promise this year will be different? Decide now that 2006 will be the year your department tackles its collective burgeoning-bottom problem and takes one small step towards health.

Our bottoms are calling out for action: our computer habits are making us wide of beam and spongy of buttock. The cause? Our desk-bound existence. The cure? A few teeny adjustments to your team’s activity levels at work. Dr Frankie Phillips from the British Dietetic Association recommends a walking programme, with employees aiming to clock up 10,000 steps a day. You’ll need pedometers, but smile sweetly at management — and remind them that a fitter staff is a healthier staff — and they should work out that a pedometer is cheaper than a sick day.

Next, motivate people around you and start building up your step count. Top of the list: e-mail and internal mail. Deliver memos by hand, banter without the aid of a keyboard, and savour the full deliciousness of gossip face to face. You’ll be more productive, and those extra steps will be racking up.

By the time you get to banning the lifts, people will be pleased to take the stairs. Or not quite so alarmed, at any rate. Which brings us on to more hardcore solutions: the ones people avoid by saying they can’t possibly find a single spare moment to do them. Ignore their pleas.

First, the lunchtime activity. Office bitching can take place away from the canteen — try a stroll to the nearest park for a bracing sandwich, a brisk walk after lunch to clear the head, or a top-speed shopping spree. If you’re very keen, organise a lunchtime class at the

office — like yoga or Pilates should leave everyone with a radiant glow, without being intimidating for the less-fit members of your team. Within a couple of weeks, you should have noticed a difference in the way you feel.

Your team should be looking a bit bouncier, too. After years of failed resolutions, achieving 10,000 steps a day and keeping it up really is cause for celebration.