It’s the time of year where every photo is a tensed jaw line with a bowl of super foods, or a gym selfie with the caption ‘#NewYearNewMe’.
All the cocktail shakers used over Christmas have been cleaned out and are being used for protein shakes and generally green-looking drinks. Yes, its New Year’s resolutions.
The problem is, by mid-February, every ounce of weight lost in January is back on again for most of us.
A divide appears between the idealistic green-eating, green-drinking ones among us who end up 1000% better looking, smelling and duly envied by the others who can’t keep it up.
I don’t necessarily have an issue with this. If people decide to be healthy then good for them – less of the tax on my bottle of Smirnoff goes to supporting them on the NHS but it’s the timing that gets me.
Why the first of January? What about the continuation of time has everyone raring to lose their gut and spend all their money on tight clothing? Because every day in December consists of eating every cheese down to the rind and eating every pinky sized chocolate in the chocolate box (except Bounty, obviously) and if they’re going to push themselves to the edge of a coronary before the 1st then why bother afterwards?
Healthy people will always be healthy. Fact. Unhealthy people may pretend but they will never be able to stay healthy for longer than a month and a half if they aren’t invested in what they’re doing and are only ruining their knees by jogging because it’s the start of the New Year.
The whole thing makes me cringe.
It makes me want to take up a diet of pork pie, vodka and heroin to throw a wobbly middle finger up to the people in the gym who stretch their backs that ripple like a sack of pythons and their perfectly defined abs.
Though I’ll be safe in the knowledge that within a month or two their gym leggings will be jeans and will have taken up smoking again.
There is a point to my rant. I think one of two things should be done. The first is that anyone who wants to change their flab to flat abs should do it immediately. Don’t wait for a meaningless date to start; just do it- because chances are, you’ll be more likely to continue with it.
If you don’t continue with it- then who cares, because it wasn’t a sacred resolution that will make you feel guilty or cause a fit of comfort eating in shame. So, rather than ‘New Year, New Me’- just ‘Me’ will do.
By Adam Baker