I started building up to the New Year ...

... for a while before the event, doing that kind of mental check-listing that I’m such a dab hand at.

For the three weeks before, I made charts, drew graphs, used different coloured pens to do exercise lists – blue for bike (sedentary... yeah, in more ways than one), red for gym (there’s still loads of ink in it), green for walking (I like green. As a pretend redhead, I think I should wear more... the only real conclusion I could draw under this column) – and got out all my blubber books to read up on what I should be doing in 2008.

I pawed through the Fat Girl Slim cookery book again, but seeing as I can’t boil an egg effectively (but somehow manage to do a fried one to perfection), I decided to give it a miss.

I leafed through that most famous of fat bird’s favourite flesh eating tomes, but realised I’d been there, done that, and still wasn’t wearing the appropriate T-shirt.

Oprah may not still be cooking In The Kitchen With Rosie or getting “with the programme” a la Bob Greene, and it seems that neither am I.

I revisited the low fat options – I’ve got all Rosemary Conley’s idealistic reads – and looked again at Atkins, For Life, For Maintenance, For Naughty Bread Lovers Everywhere.

The GI complexities, Diet Doctors Inside and Out, low carb for veggies, low carb forever, books that tell you how to have Big, Big Love when you’re a big, big lass (pillows have a million different uses and apparently double as a hoist).

Then there was self-hypnosis, Paul McKenna’s CD which made him sound like a man possessed but didn’t make me infused with the spirit to Just Say No. Not forgetting six books on how to kick-start my metabolism (but not one on how to stop chewing when full).

I stumbled upon Michael Winner’s Fat Pig Diet, but I can’t stand to look at his face, Nerys and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet, but I don’t do smug rich girls, The Karl Lagerfeld Diet, but who wants to look that rough in skinny jeans and fingerless leather gloves?

So there I was, charts and books at my feet, when I realised that all the reading and advice in the world won’t make 2008 a better year, body-wise.

Short of a gastric bypass and sudden love of hospital food, I came to the Technicolored conclusion that maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to make grand gestures with this dieting lark.

To borrow a line from Robbie Williams and other AAers, I just need to live one day at a time.

I do, however, have difficulties accepting the things I cannot change, and I’ve spent a lifetime not being able to spot the different between these and the things I can.

My slim boyfriend, who’s fast gaining a belly due to a mixture of Hiya Love’s homemade everything and general contentment, last night put all this into context for me.

While I was pawing through my Fat Club book, grieving over the fact I was 2lb short of losing two stone six months ago but am now 2lb heavier than I was when I first went for the weigh-in (keeping up?), he took it upon himself to dish up some tough love.

No, it didn’t consist of taking the tin of Quality Street off the table – worse, prising my jaws open and picking the round toffee out of my teeth – but reminding me that I can no longer spend my life just talking about my inability to diet effectively.

“Either put up or shut up,” he told me. “And I don’t want to hear that nonsense about you not having enough interest in yourself to do it.

“You know what you’ve got to do – stop eating for six, and move more.

“Or, and here’s a thing, stop putting yourself through this and accept yourself for who and what you are. You’re lovely. You just don’t see it, as you define yourself by your waist size.

“You need to open your eyes and see what’s in front of you.”

Before I could say “a big belly, spaniels ears for boobs, more chins than a Chinese telephone directory, fat, fat, FAT”, he reminded me that it was my future.

Another F word.

So my New Year’s resolution is my Monday to Sunday resolution on a normal week, and that’s to eat less and move more.

It’s written down in black and white – and red and green and blue.

It’s my future. (But I had a bloody good blowout on chicken pie and steamed chocolate pudding as I attempted – again – to say goodbye to my lardy-arsed past.)