Kirsty Bosley: Never gonna give anything up because there's just no need to

I’ve never been a smoker so I’m not giving up cigarettes with grand aspirations to switch to robo-fags or go full-on cold turkey.

I’d rather throw myself into the sea wearing wellies filled with quick-dry cement than give up cakes or chocolate, so that’s out of the window as well. Sorry future Kirsty – I apologise now for your inevitable, forthcoming cholesterol problem.

Depriving ourselves of stuff we like is, I find, a very unpopular idea. It makes us miserable and seems to annoy our pals a little bit too. And all in the name of a new year? With no other real, solid reasoning for foregoing our favourite things? It’s weird.

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No one is going to be there with a bouquet of flowers and a ‘nice one on having a big try’ medal if you cut out crisps for six months.

There will be no ceremony to give you a big tap on the head for not eating chocolate for a year. There’s going to be no fanfare when you continue drinking in six months time, and no big ‘well done you’ back clap when you have your first cigarette after a month of abstaining.

Long-term life changes are commendable. If you make a healthy change for yourself that you can sustain over time, then more power to you. Especially if it means a longer, healthier life when you’re not a big fat drain on the NHS (I will apologise now, again, for what may become of future Kirsty).

But what is the value of a short-term abstinence? Is it for bragging about? In most cases, it isn’t, surely? Is it to somehow prove to yourself and others that you can, in fact, stick by something for once after years of being a bit flaky?

Quite probably. Maybe you’re just one of those people that likes a task to complete. I just don’t understand it, myself, but I don’t purport to know everything. I have video games for a bit of self-congratulatory achievement. Well done, Kirsty, you’ve just slain a worg and levelled up, saving a whole pixelly village in the process. Time for a celebratory pizza!

It’s just horses for courses.

Talking of horses, the only thing I’ve ever really given up after years of indulgence is meat. Double cheeseburgers, crispy shredded beef and my nan’s black pudding sausages – I wrote off the lot. I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do, and it has been a few years since I gobbled up that last KFC.

It has been a thankless undertaking. It’s not that I wanted thanks, I’m only mentioning it because it’s the only thing I’ve ever really given up and stuck to.

I didn’t expect or want a fanfare or a big congratulations when I made like Morrissey and stopped, though in an ideal world I would have appreciated party poppers, pulled by 10 of the cutest rescue pigs. And it’s just as well that I didn’t expect it, because no one gives you a medal for vegetarianism. And I can’t imagine that little trotters can get a handle on those fiddly strings.

In fact, I’ve found that many people almost resent my choice to abstain. Occasionally I do get someone poised to engage me in a big row when I order the veggie option.

‘Why are you a vegetarian?’ is one of those questions, like ‘why are you wearing that weird lipstick?’ that belongs in the ‘mind your own business’ category.

Sure, I talk about it in my column occasionally, but it’s only because I know it annoys the hardcore meat fans out there, and I like to see the angry comments I receive after publication.

No one likes a vegetarian, especially one that tells you that they are one.

Abstinence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, I’ve found. It just makes people annoyed with you. This January, pubs everywhere will be filled with people buying J2Os and being lambasted by their mates for doing so.

Temperance is about as much fun, you’d think, as an ingrowing toenail – best cut out.

Regular gym goers will begin to snarl and sigh at the gaggles of girls standing around the squat rack, checking in on Facebook and hoping for hot buns to rival even Kim Kardashian.

Portly newbies with the best intentions will take to the cardio machines at peak times, only to walk briskly on a zero degree incline to make them feel better about the fact that they’re still elbows deep in the leftover Christmas cheese. Trust me, I have been that lady. I am still that lady, in many ways. Only now I don’t take up the cross-trainer. That and all of my Christmas cheese was devoured way before January.

The resolution that I’m choosing to keep this year is something that I have always tried to keep, no matter the month.

I’m going to try and be kinder to people. I know, I sound like a Miss World entrant, 2016. “I want world peace and for everyone to be really nice to one another.”

But I do think that it’ll be beneficial in the long run. Now, every time I order the halloumi and a present acquaintance asks me why I’m a vegetarian, I will remember my resolution. Instead of telling them to mind their own effing business, I will look at them kindly and say simply ‘I don’t know’. Because that seems much nicer than getting angry at them while 10 imaginary pigs blow party horns in my mind.