January: It's Like a Month of Mondays

Well, how's everyone doing in the still unwieldy-sounding 2013? I'm tackling my annual 'no booze in January' health drive, with mixed results. Generally, I find this a breeze until about the third weekend of the month, where I crack and have a glass of red, then get back onto the wagon, and January slips by with little to trouble me, other than being penniless.

This year, however, it feels as though January has lasted for three months already and I can't believe there's another week to go. Every evening finds me gasping for a glass and gnawing at my own fists with boredom and pent-up irritation. I think the snow hasn't helped, rendering me house-bound for most of the weekend, due to a combination of transport being nigh-on impossible (surely in the Great Freeze of the 17th Century, when even the Thames was solid, no-one encountered this many problems traversing London? I'm tempted to revert to a horse and carriage), and my only sensible footwear, a pair of walking boots purchased to deal with Edinburgh's Arctic conditions, being in storage.

This week, for example has been taken up with: 1/ Trying not to fall over on suburban iced pavements (I have a morbid fear of breaking a hip) 2/ Deciding I'm bored of wearing trainers (only footwear approaching 'condition appropriate'); risking heeled boots, as most streets are free of hip-breaking hazards 3/ Buying more Uniqlo heat-tec thermals (I'm now the proud owner of 3 long-sleeved t-shirts, a vest top, 2 pairs of thermal leggings and 2 pairs of thermal socks; I should have some kind of Advantage card with them. I'm resisting the temptation to wear them all at once) 4/ Trying to distract myself from lack of booze by going to the gym or eating loads of carbs (one of those options is healthier than the other) 5/ Trying to work out finances by scribbling sums on backs of envelopes. How do I have so little money, when I think I live the life of a particularly ascetic nun? I'm also trying to avoid scoffing an entire Graze box the minute it hits my desk and to work out whether I really need a pair of hand-knitted bed socks in the Hush sale (only a tenner!) or whether I'm just hankering after them because I'm grumpy and cold and I feel like I could pretend I'm in Little House on the Prairie, rather than a very cold bedroom in Streatham. 

I've also decided that I should replace sitting in pubs with Doing Culture, as then you can have a cup of tea afterwards instead. The start of the year has seen me race around The Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Tate (kind of a 'greatest hits' show, so very little I hadn't seen before, but some nice tapestries and stained glass at the end); a free Marilyn Monroe exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery (which was literally one room and not particularly inspiring) and I'm going to the V&A's Hollywood Costume on Sunday. 

I've also caught a plethora of films, including Life of Pi (beautiful and finally a film where watching it in 3D actively enhanced my enjoyment of it); Seven Psychopaths (Tarantino-lite, but fairly enjoyable); The Sessions (brilliant - and I had a very cathartic weep at the end) and I've got Zero Dark Thirty planned for Saturday evening, and Les Mis pencilled in for Sunday afternoon.

The only good thing about January, really, is the array of good films, all being released prior to the Oscars. It's the ideal winter activity, going to the cinema: warm, comfy seats, uses up a few hours and you can discuss it afterwards, over a coffee. Well, unless you've seen The Impossible, which I imagine requires a very stiff drink, given all the talk of people fainting in it, which is one of the reasons I'm avoiding it. I think Film Club will be the new Book Club for 2013.

I've decided to avoid New Year's Resolutions this year, (other than perhaps not going to see every exhibition in the last week it's on - meaning that the only ticket I could book for the Hollywood Costumes is at 8.45pm on a Sunday, when really I should be sitting down with a nice cup of cocoa, waiting for the BBC's Victorian police-'n'-prostitutes extravaganza Ripper Street to air.) It doesn't stop you from being bombarded with information about bloody diets, though. This year's favourites seem to be the Paleo Diet (eats, shoots and leaves? Or rather leaves, fruit, nuts, occasional meat - whatever most closely approximates a Mammoth, so, bison? or yak? - and probably some twigs. And lots of running around in fur loincloths. You are a sort of human/squirrel hybrid); the Alkaline Diet (cut out anything fun, squirt lemon juice over whatever you're then allowed to eat, probably find yourself constantly wondering whether okra is OK and dates are damnable, or whether it's the other way round. You are a kind of Diet Scientist, and should probably be encouraged to cook all your food over a bunsen burner); and the 5:2 Diet, aka Intermittent Fasting. I saw the Horizon documentary that this is based on last summer, and it seemed to make some actual scientific sense, and to have greater benefits than just losing a few pounds in a challenging/annoying way and then putting them all back on again once you'd re-introduced burgers, chips and wine into your diet. 

To wit - intermittent fasting helps to prevent cancer, reduce cholesterol levels and prevent Alzheimer's. Which I'm all in favour of, given how shot to shit my memory is. The idea is that you reduce your calories to 500 for 2 days a week, and then eat normally for the other 5. So, it's not technically 'fasting', it's just reducing your food to about a quarter of the recommended intake. Who decided, by the way, that all women, whether they be 5' with birdlike bones, or more Miranda-sized, should be eating 2,000 calories a day? It's always amazed me that we just take that as read - and equally that 'dieting' usually translates, in calorie terms, to about 1,200 a day. Doesn't it depend on how much you were eating in the first place? If you're generally stuffing down 4,000 calories (and you're not training for a  Gold in the next Olympics coxless four), then cutting down to 2,000 would be a diet.

Anyway, I digress. I've tried doing this, but not in any sort of rigid way. It's just relatively easy on a weekend if you have no plans (there are tumbleweeds blowing through my diary, as all my friends are skint, so are staying at home). You can get up and go to the gym, and then you eat something for lunch, and then something for dinner. With a lot of tea, coffee and water in between times. It's pretty easy, it just makes you a bit over-focussed on calories and you generally eat a lot of soup and boiled eggs. And you feel weirdly sprightly the next day. Or, you do if you don't wake up at 3.00am on a Monday, can't get back to sleep, spend the whole day in a spectacular snit and then go home and chuff down a load of pasta and pesto and a tiramisu. But I think that was an anomaly. The other upside is of course that it saves you quite a lot of money, so it gets my vote, especially in January. Lots of people seem to be doing it, and strangely enjoying it - I think they like the challenge of working out what they can eat - and also the relief of being able to eat 'normally' the next day. Often it's the daily grind of a diet that gets you down and makes you chuck them in. At least this way, if you know what 500 calories looks like, it also makes you more aware of what you're eating the rest of the time, which should help with general health in the longterm. 

Right, after all this talk of health, it's off to the gym where I shall be turned into a sweaty wreck by Geezerboy Mikey. At least the gym resolution is one that's stuck, for which I'm still clapping myself heartily on the back (though not volunteering for the Great North Run, as one of my friends is. Is she mad? Maybe she's just an uber-Paleo. I could dress up as a T Rex and chase her to help her along).