Who's The Daddy: Walking my way back into my New Year’s resolution

Say your goal was to lose a stone by Easter (pretty achievable, measurable and with a specific time frame), but the first weekend of the New Year you got bored one Saturday evening after 147 days of not drinking, and Christmas and New Year was a total Covid washout, so you necked a couple of bottles of Prosecco with your wife with Substance 1987 blaring out of your speakers, and you think, “Hmmm, this sounds even better than it usually does.”

And while you’re soaring with your ancestors for those magical first 20 minutes as your blood alcohol level rises, everything’s alright with the world. As the dopamine hits in a way that it hasn’t for months, you find yourself making all kinds of promises - such as stumping up for the next holiday that you’d agreed to go Dutch on when you booked it last October.

You might say to yourself, “Sod it, I’ve blown it now. Might as well huff pizza and Guinness every other night.” And all your good intentions evaporate the day the Christmas decorations go back in the loft, as you’re wide awake at 1.10am but exhausted as a ton of ethanol and sugar crashes around your system with such force that you swear you can hear it, while you wonder how you’re going to get through the day.

But here’s the thing. We all fall off the wagon sometimes. And if one of its tyres got a puncture, you wouldn’t have a temper tantrum and slash the other three, would you? So why do the same with your holy grail?

The only times yours truly’s been successful with goals is when they’re written down, more often than not on a note on my phone. Either a monthly budget, weight loss target or building an emergency fund. It just makes them feel more real when you can see them in black and white.Marginal gains - the one percenters - work. They’re pretty much invisible to the naked eye, but over time turn into a superpower. Fitness expert James Smith likens it to a bog roll. If you rip off one sheet a day, nobody’s going to notice any difference at first. But three months later, it’s going to look a lot smaller than when you started.

The best exercise hardly anyone talks about, apart from me most weeks and a few people on YouTube, is walking. We are designed to cover long distances, slowly. Not stare at a screen for eight hours a day at work, a bigger one for four hours watching Netflix when we’re done, and then a tiny one in bed as we drift off to sleep.

They bang on about 10,000 steps a day. Every day. Which in an ideal world would be, er, ideal. But some days (North West winters and work) that’s not achievable. So do as many as you can, day after day. Your phone keeps count and charts your progress and your dog, if you have one, will think every day is his birthday.

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