Just over a week into the new year, and Dry January is proving pretty easy. After a relatively abstemious festive period, my Christmas drinks table was still fairly full by the time I came to confine all the bottles of booze to the pantry for the duration of this month.

I'm not normally one for new year's resolutions and, coupled with a natural antipathy for themed weeks and months (I certainly haven't been embracing either "Veganuary" or the ridiculous "Januhairy", where women are supposed to ditch the underarm razor for a month - why?), I tend to avoid such sheeplike activities.

But this year, I decided to bring Lent forward by a couple of months and deprive myself of the joys of alcohol for January - and probably February as well (gulp).

I intend to drop a dress size, and depriving myself of that nightly glass or two of wine seems a sensible way to do it.

The trouble is, of course, that a pre-dinner glass of wine or cocktail (my husband and I enjoy a dry martini, shaken not stirred) seems so much more convivial - and sophisticated - than a cup of tea or a glass of summer fruits squash.

But for the sake of the increasingly unworn clothes in my wardrobe, I'm determined to see it through.

Heck, I might even go on a bit of diet to supplement my no-booze weight loss routine.

The trouble with that is, which regime to choose? There are now so many fad diets that one is spoilt for choice.

On television this week, some overweight people were put on a variety of diets to see how they fared. One chap lost two stone in 30 days on the Greggs diet, believe it or not. This involved eating only food from the popular purveyor of pasties (including sausage rolls, egg butties and salads), which is great advertising for the company - but it actually worked. His partner, who was put on a whole food diet, lost less weight but found the process more interesting, as he got to cook some interesting dishes.

Most intriguing of all was the "potato diet", on which the chosen guinea pig lost a stone in two weeks by eating nothing but spuds. Who'd have thought carbohydrates could be so slimming?

I switched on the programme halfway through details of the potato diet, so I didn't get the entire gist of how it works but it definitely involved two weeks of spuds galore. It's boring, the woman on it admitted, but boy does it work.

So, as of next week, that's my diet sorted. Chips and crisps for a fortnight, at the end of which I'll be a dress size less than I am now. Now, that's my sort of diet.