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Told yourself you were going to diet? It might be time for a rethink. Here’s why:
1. It’s the best time of year to eat out
If you like food (and let’s face it – if you need to lose weight, you almost certainly do), January is not the time of year to install a ‘closed’ sign on your mouth-hole. It’s the time of year when desperate restaurants slash prices and supermarkets erect massive signs saying: ‘We will basically pay you to eat roast pork!’, meaning you can live like a king for very little indeed. Unless you’d rather live like a miserable bugger, of course. In which case January dieters are in luck, because…
2. Post-Christmas healthy eaters have the worst conversations
You’re at work. You’re tucking into your healthy salad lunch. A colleague says: ‘Losing the Christmas flab, eh?’ You respond: ‘Just trying to be healthy!’ The next day you’re opening your healthy salad lunch. A different colleague says: ‘Losing the Christmas flab, eh?’ You respond (again): ‘Just trying to be healthy!’ We won’t bother telling you what happens the following day. You can probably guess.
3. Only liars diet in January
It’s a ‘new year’s resolution’. Not a ‘January resolution’. It only counts if you’re going to keep it going for 12 months. And in their heart, people whose resolution involves dieting know there’s no way they’ll manage more than four weeks of slugging back NutriBullet goop. So in fact, the resolution they’ve really picked is: ‘lying to myself and everyone around me.’
4. We’re meant to be fat in cold weather
Dudes: it’s winter. When it’s cold outside, we’re MEANT to be a bit fat. Ever see a svelte polar bear? Notice how few walruses ever win Weight Watchers Slimmer Of The Year? That’s because you need that lovely insulation in chilly climes. Just look at the way seal ions eat, ffs. They’re always packing down penguins, which – as anyone who’s ever read the packet will realise – are chocka with calories.
5. Veganuary is clearly bullshit
2016’s supposed big reason to watch what you eat this Jan? Veganuary – a month-long stab at being vegan. Or as we like to think of it: ‘the most annoyingly named of all the faddy months’. After all, there’s only one way that the pronunciation of ‘Veganuary’ works: if you start pronouncing ‘vegan’ the same way you pronounce ‘vagina’. And we’re pretty sure that ‘Vajinuary’ involves a totally different diet. Amirite amirite?
6. Booze and Burger King
Dieters: you know that Croydon Burger King’s just applied for an alcoholic licence, right? So that it can trial serving lovely, calorific beer at all Burger Kings across London? No? Never mind. We'll leave you to your kale.
7. No-one will notice
Unless they’re morbidly obese, you know the first thing people always say to someone on a diet? ‘You don’t look like you need to lose weight’. You know why? Skip forward one month, you know what that’s gonna translate to? ‘Oh, you lost weight? Hmm. You still look pretty normal to me.’ Stick to the cheeseburgers.
8. It's BORRRINNNGGGGG!!!!
Picking a diet as your new year’s resolution is a bit like buying a puppy for Christmas. On first think: a great idea. In reality: it shits all over everything in your life. Dinner with mates? It’ll crap all over that. Night out on the piss? Better pop a little poop onto that plan too.
9. What about the exercise regime?
If you want to be healthy in January, you should really be exercising. But anyone who’s anyone knows the science about fuelling up properly beforehand. After all, in order to work out to your full potential, research shows that a human adult has to first eat five Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference cherry bakewells. Alright, we don’t know the science. But we do know that eating is important if you’re exercising. Which makes it a waaaayyyy better new year’s resolution.
10. It’s against the order of nature
If winter was a good time to diet, why is it that precisely zero restaurants’ winter menus consist of salads? That no-one ever looks at frosty ground and thinks: ‘You know what I want to eat in this weather? Cold, sliced watery stuff!’ There’s a time and a place for diets. It ain’t in January, dudes. It’s summer. Take our advice, hold the diet for then and join us in being fatties for the next few months. You’ll feel better for it.
Convinced? Start eating your way through the best 100 dishes in London right now.