LIFE LESSONS

KATY HARRINGTON No more New Year, New You, please

YOU want the good news or the bad news? Good news first: 2017 is almost over. We made it. The bad news is that means 2018 is coming and there’s no reason to believe it will be any better. Trump still has the nuclear codes, Theresa still has to deliver Brexit, and it doesn’t look like James Corden is going to retire any time soon. Still, we can at least try and start 2018 right. How? By making a long and impossible-to-carry out list of New Year’s resolutions of course: Lose weight, travel more, save money, learn French! Before you do though, answer this: what was your resolution this time last year? Exactly.

Instead of making a resolution, I think I might just try and stick with the things that worked in 2017. A month of two off the grog every year does wonders (if you can’t face Dry Jan try doing it just from Monday– Friday for the month instead, Dry Jan Lite). Abandoning online dating once and for all was a good move, it sucks the life out of you and everyone else. Same goes for Facebook, it’s rubbish. Mindless scrolling through pictures of crap you and your friends did is making us all narcissistic and incapable of reading more than four lines before getting bored and flicking to the next thing. If anyone is planning a diet in January, I’d say this: I spent 11 months of last year meticulously tracking every calorie, exercising and paying for personal trainers then I gave it all up, stopped weighing myself every day and lost 8lbs. I’m now convinced that if we spent half the time and energy — and devoted half the pages written, studies carried out and money spent on losing weight — to solving problems at home and abroad we’d have world peace by now. And after the year we’ve had, who doesn’t need peace.