Sometimes it's hard to be a man. We are more likely than women to be killed in traffic accidents. We are more likely than women to be the victims of violent crime. And now we learn we are more likely than women to die of cancer. According to Cancer Research UK, men are 60% more likely than women to develop cancer, and 70% more likely to die from it. The figures refer, obviously, only to those cancers that are not sex-specific. And why are they at so much more risk? There is no biological reason, say the ­experts, so it might be because men adopt a "stiff upper lip" attitude about going to the doctor, and are unaware that smoking, drinking, eating 15 rashers of bacon a day and never moving from the sofa are likely to be bad for them.

Now men can be stupid. But not that stupid. We know a lifestyle predicated on instant gratification is bad for us. Frankly, you'd need to have lived in a cave for the past 30 years to have avoided that message. Nor do we avoid the doctor because we're afraid, or because we feel it's important to keep up appearances. No, the reason unhealthy men are unhealthy is because we're too lazy to be healthy.

Being healthy takes effort. It means cooking nutritionally balanced meals, possibly using kitchen equipment with which we are unfamiliar, such as the steamer, rather than throwing half a dozen kinds of meat into a frying pan. It means eating a ricecake or a piece of fruit when one feels peckish, rather than the entire pack of fun-sized Mars bars bought to give out to the kids at your younger child's birthday party. It means undertaking the laborious process of trying to make an appointment at the surgery, and turning up at the appointed time – rather than assuming a day on the sofa with whatever combination of ­painkillers you've got in the house is bound to cure all ills.

At the back of our minds we understand we are storing up a world of trouble for ourselves. We know that life is short and then you die. But we kid ourselves that there will always be time – probably when there's no sport on TV and no one to go to the pub with – to renounce our evil ways and embrace good health. After all, why do today what you can put off until 2019?

So how to get us off our barstools? The best way is not to warn men of dire consequences, or point out that they'll be able to play with their grandkids; many of us find playing with our own kids tedious enough, and the prospect of a new lot of mewling infants in 20 years is hardly attractive.

Better to prey on our own self-loathing. The point at which lazy men renounce torpor is the point at which the convenience of sitting around is outweighed by the disgust at what we've become. As a rough guide, a man who no longer has sexual fantasies because it's impossible for him to imagine anyone wanting to sleep with such a pathetic excuse for humanity is a man ready to change his lifestyle – even if it takes an age from making the decision to putting his resolutions into practice.

I know whereof I speak. In January, I gave up smoking, just nine months after making the decision to give up smoking. What swayed me was not the risk of lung cancer, but the knowledge that it looked tawdry to walk down the street holding hands with two kids, a fag in my mouth. That, and the fact that I felt guilty about my son grasping my hand while I was holding a cigarette, with predictable please-don't-tell-mum-what-that-big-burn-in-your-palm-is-I'll-buy-you-sweets consequences.

On giving up smoking I made a resolution to take up running. Yesterday – six months later – I bought my first running shoes; and thismorning I finally fulfilled my pledge and went running. See, it can be done. And it all took was for me to hate myself first.