ONLY four days to go to the end of Dry January. Presumably it means that come Saturday anyone who’s been on the wagon for the past month can get back to normal.

That might mean getting blathered, the chances of which – let’s face it – are pretty high if you’ve been dry for a month, given that not a drop of alcohol has passed those dried-out lips since New Year’s Eve.

I’ve lost count of the number of people of my acquaintance who’ve virtuously – and, it has to be said, somewhat self-righteously – given up their daily tincture of tonsil tonic in a new-year-new-you bodily cleansing frenzy.

And it’s not just the booze that gets the old heave-ho but all the other naughty things of life too.

Chocolate. Doorstop bread slathered with farmhouse butter. Cakes with sticky-finger-licking icing. Too much red meat. Too much white meat. Creamy sauces or unctuous gravy to pour over. Roast spuds and Yorkshire puds. Biscuits with chocolate and without. Fish and chips, the odd kebab or burger. Rice and pasta – the list goes on.

It’s the brave faces that get me. The hard-done-by ‘I can’t eat or drink that’ diet philosophy on life. The valiant but secretly pained faces across the friends’ dinner table as everyone tucks into a big, fat ’otpot washed down with great quaffing glugs of wine while they push a couple of lost and lonely nuggets of meat around a plate that’s far too big for the job while sipping a glass of tap.

And if it’s not the wan I’m-so-deprived approach, the unimpeachable, high-minded and saintly demeanour of those who bore everyone rigid with their self-righteous ‘aren’t I a brilliant resistant?’ stance while at the same time wagging an admonishing ‘you drink too much’ finger when you and your mates open a second bottle, is just as bad.

Because you just know, as certain as eating too much junk food makes you fat, that one day that smug wagon is going to be fallen off from a great height and any weight lost is going to be piled back on. I know, because I’ve done it.

All that ‘look at me – I’ve lost 16 stone in a day!’ is a complete fallacy. All those extreme purge-yourself-of-fat pills, fart-a-lot cabbage diets and eat yourself uber-slim programmes prey ruthlessly and cynically on our low self-esteem about how we look, with many of them fleecing us of hundreds of pounds in hard-earned cash while they do so.

Diets, let’s be honest, don’t work. For if they did, why are there more obese people around than ever before?

We should face it – dreams of being Kate Moss-thin are very often just that. It’s highly unlikely we’ll go from a size 18 to a spindly size eight and stay there. We’ll always be self-critical of how we look in the mirror and the ‘does my bum/belly/boobs look big in this?’ will always be part of our mantra, because we’re awash with wall-to-wall lifestyle and fashion magazines and websites who prey on our self-perceived inadequacies and tell us that’s how we ought to be.

There’s clearly a correlation between strict denial of booze and some foods, fast weight loss and piling the pounds back on – very much a case of diet in haste and repent at leisure. We all want to look and feel better about ourselves far too quickly for it to be long-term effective.

You get down to an optimum weight on some ridiculous crash-and-burn diet then carry on as you were before. The weight then creeps back on over a stealthy period of time so why don’t we take that long to get the pounds off in the first place for more lasting results?

In reality losing weight is like giving up fags – it’s about recognising the triggers that make us want to consume more, whether it be cigarettes, booze or cream cakes, and then breaking the cycle.

Surely it’s a case of cutting down but not out, because therein lies the key to gradual but sustained weight loss.

Don’t deny yourself completely, say the sensible diet pundits – as that’s when resentment (or smugness!) kicks in – but make better, more informed choices about what you eat and drink and when. And, they add, get a bit of exercise while you’re at it.

That way we’ll defuse the Type 2 diabetes time bomb, help stop our beloved NHS creaking at the knees with obesity overload and feel a million times better in the process. Can’t fault the logic.

Forget Dry January – now where’s that glass of wine?