Top tips for looking after yourself this Winter 

Winter is coming. Actually, winter is here, and it has brought its usual gifts: darkness at 4pm, a cold that gets into your bones, and the annual ritual of standing in the hallway shouting “has anyone seen my gloves?” while three pairs of gloves sit in plain sight on the shoe rack.

Every year I tell myself this will be the winter I get it together. The winter I become a person with a routine. The winter I do yoga at 6am, batch-cook lentils, and emerge in March glowing like a woman in a multivitamin supplement box advertisement.

I am not a morning person. I have never been a morning person. I am the kind of person who does strengthening training exactly once a week and feels enormously virtuous about it for the remaining six days. My exercise is walking the streets of London at pace, usually while slightly late. My cardio is dancing round the kitchen and singing loudly and badly, often at the same time. I am not a routine person, I’m a person who occasionally has a good idea and then does it immediately, before I can talk myself out of it.

Every year, I get to mid-January having eaten soup standing up at the counter and watched four episodes of something mediocre on my phone in bed.

So this year, I’m lowering the bar considerably. I think that’s the secret.

Here are my top tips (from a woman who owns 300 Barbies and still can’t find her gloves) for looking after yourself this winter.

1. Stay connected (and yes, the voice note counts)

Winter weather has a talent for cancelling plans. The cold evening arrives, the invitation starts to look like effort, and suddenly it’s February and you haven’t seen your friends since Bonfire Night.

Most people including myself use WhatsApp to stay connected all year round and in winter, that app earns its keep. A voice note on the walk to school, a five-minute call while you’re doing the washing up, a group chat that descends into nonsense at 11pm: it all counts. It is not a substitute for seeing people, but it is a bridge, and a bridge is better than nothing.

My personal rule: if I’ve thought about someone, I send the message. Not the perfectly worded message. Just the message. “Saw this and thought of you” takes four seconds and has genuinely kept friendships alive for me through winters when I barely left the house.

2. Sort your sleep (and stop blaming your phone for everything)

Poor sleep makes everything worse. Everything. I am a fundamentally less pleasant person on six hours, and my family would agree, probably with examples.

Mobile phones get a bad reputation for disrupting sleep, but the honest picture is more nuanced. Blue light emitted by LED screens can suppress melatonin, the hormone that helps you drift off, which is why staring at your phone at midnight isn’t doing you any favours. But your phone can also be the thing that helps.

What actually helps:

• Night mode: switch it on. It’s free, it takes ten seconds, and it warms up the screen so it’s less brutal at 10pm.
• Sleep apps: Headspace and Calm both offer meditation and sleep content, and both are backed by the NHS. I was sceptical about sleep stories until I fell asleep nine minutes into one and woke up at 3am with my headphones still in. A win, technically.
• The phone outside the bedroom: I manage this about twice a week. I’m mentioning it because it works, not because I’ve mastered it.

3. Share your location (and tell your family where you are)

I do this with my son. We share locations, and it’s become a small, reassuring thread between us, not surveillance, just a quiet “he’s on his way home.”

If you live alone, or you commute in the dark, or you’re the kind of person who takes a wrong turn in a dodgy London street, location sharing is genuinely useful. It’s not just a winter thing either, it’s an all-year-round safety net that costs nothing and takes about a minute to set up.

4. Use your phone to get you outside

Here’s the irony: the device that keeps us on the sofa is also very good at getting us off it, if we use it properly.

• A podcast you only listen to while walking. That’s the whole trick. I have subscribed to BBC Maestro a year ago I’ve only time to listen to my courses outdoors, and I have walked in weather that would otherwise have had me reaching for the biscuit tin.
• A calendar reminder at lunchtime. “Go outside.” That’s it. That’s the reminder. It’s dark by 4pm, so the daylight has to be caught when it’s there.
• Step tracking. I’m not going to pretend I hit 10,000 steps. But seeing the number go up is oddly satisfying, and it’s a far better use of the phone than another scroll.

The point isn’t fitness. It’s daylight, movement and a change of scene, all of which do more for my mood than almost anything else on this list.

5. Forget the morning routine. Build a “whenever I remember” routine instead.

Every winter article tells you to create a calm, intentional morning routine. I would like to formally object on behalf of everyone who has never once woken up calm or intentional.

If mornings aren’t your thing, don’t force it. Build the routine around the bits of the day you actually enjoy. For me, that’s music, but not at 8am. At 8am I am a woman operating on muscle memory and a strong desire to be left alone. The music comes later, usually in the kitchen, usually with dancing, usually with me singing a harmony part that nobody asked for.

The point isn’t the time of day. It’s having one small thing you do for yourself that isn’t a task. A song. A ten-minute walk. A phone call. Whatever it is, attach it to something you already do, the kettle, the school run, the walk to the tube, so it doesn’t need willpower to happen.

My version: check the weather so I don’t spend the day in the wrong coat. It takes four seconds and it changes the shape of the day. That’s the whole routine. I’m not proud of it, but it works.

6. Take your vitamin D (the NHS says so)

This one is boring and genuinely important. In the UK, the NHS advises everyone to consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement during autumn and winter, because we simply don’t get enough sunlight to make it ourselves. Low vitamin D is linked to tiredness and low mood, and it’s one of the cheapest, easiest things you can do for yourself.

I keep mine next to the kettle. If it’s not in my eyeline, it doesn’t happen.

7. Consider a light 

Seasonal affective disorder affects around two million people in the UK, and plenty more of us feel a lesser version of it: the flat, heavy feeling that arrives in November and lifts in April. If that sounds familiar, a light therapy lamp or SAD lamp is worth a look. You sit near it for 20-30 minutes in the morning and, for many people, it genuinely helps.

Also: get outside when there is any daylight at all, even if it’s grey. Grey daylight is still daylight, and it’s better than the light in your kitchen.

8. Soup. Lots of soup.

There is a reason every winter article mentions soup, and it’s because soup is the answer to most winter problems. It’s cheap, it’s warm, it fills you up, and you can make a big pot on Sunday and eat it for four days without anyone accusing you of giving up.

My method: whatever vegetables are looking sad in the fridge, an onion, some stock, a tin of beans, and a splash of something. Blend it or don’t. Eat it with bread. Feel smug.

9. Dress properly (a lecture from someone who has learned the hard way)

Layers. Not one enormous coat you can’t take off on the tube, but layers. Thermal vest (yes, really, they’re not just for grandparents), a jumper, a coat, a scarf. And a spare pair of gloves in your bag, because you will lose one, and it will be the left one, and you will never find out why.

10. Book something to look forward to

Winter is bearable when there’s a date in the diary with something nice attached to it. A cinema trip, a coffee with a friend, a show, a weekend away, a very small thing like “on Thursday I’m going to that bakery.”

One of my favourite things about this job is getting to go and see things, a gig, a play, a launch, and I’ve realised the anticipation is half the benefit. The looking forward to it is a mood-lifter in itself. So plan something. Anything. Put it in the calendar in big letters. I have just booked myself and my bestie two tickets for Santana in June 2027!! 

11. Lower the bar (the most important tip)

Here’s the thing I’ve finally learned, at considerable cost to my own self-esteem: winter is not the season for reinvention. It’s the season for maintenance.

You don’t need to overhaul your routine. You don’t need to become a person who journals and does cold water swimming. I certainly won’t be. You need to do a few small things, repeatedly, and be kind to yourself when you don’t.

A ten-minute lunchtime walk is more achievable than a new fitness regime. One weekly strength session you actually turn up to is worth more than a five-day plan you abandon by Thursday. Dancing round the kitchen counts. Walking the streets of London counts, especially if you’re walking fast because you’re late, which, in this city, is most of us.

Start small. Keep it small. That’s the whole strategy.

Winter is a tough time of year. The dark mornings and long evenings really do affect how motivated and positive we feel, and pretending otherwise is not helpful.

But the good news is that you don’t need to do anything dramatic. Your phone, that thing currently in your hand, probably while you read this, can be part of the solution: staying in touch when the weather keeps you in, winding down with a sleep app at night, sharing your location so someone knows you got home, setting a reminder to get outside while it’s still light.

Small changes add up. A voice note. A lunchtime walk. A song in the kitchen. A vitamin D tablet by the kettle. A plan for Thursday.

If you do none of it and simply survive until March, that’s fine too. I’ve got 300 Barbies to keep me company or whatever your equivalent is.

Has anyone seen my gloves?