Perhaps the biggest culture shock I had on moving to Sweden was being invited to a friend of my wife’s wedding lunch, and finding that it was just the bride, the groom, the parents and a tiny group of friends at a very ordinary pub. There was no fanfare, no fuss – and to my mind, nothing I would call a celebration. This was my introduction to, and admittedly an extreme example of, lagom, Sweden’s doctrine of “just enough”.

Five years later, having become a Swede myself, I find myself groaning as I see lagom touted as 2017’s big new thing.

I beg you: please don’t do this. Don’t turn lagom – my adopted country’s suffocating doctrine of Lutheran self-denial – into a lifestyle trend. You may as well celebrate middle-of-the-road, low expectations, or conforming to the norm.

Vogue started it, touting Swedish lagom as the successor to hygge. Hygge, the Danish concept of cosiness and nurturing a convivial atmosphere, was such a British publishing phenomenon last year that there was even a bandwagon of books satirising the bandwagon, alongside the dozens banging on about Danes being the world’s biggest consumers of candles.

There’s a superficial logic: lagom dominates Swedish life, language and culture in a similar way that hygge does Denmark’s; both concepts are loaded with so many shades of meaning that no translation really does them justice; both form part of the romantic idea of their nation; both fit the current British obsession with all things Scandi.

Swedes do see themselves as landet lagom, the lagom country. Lagom är bäst, meaning “enough is as good as a feast”, is the Swedish proverb to top them all. Yet while hygge clearly works as an aspirational lifestyle export, to my mind lagom really doesn’t.

Both imply a distaste for extravagance and flashiness, but hygge is active in a way that lagom is not. Hygge is about doing that little bit extra to create a special atmosphere. Lagom, although always positive, is almost the opposite. It’s about not doing what is unnecessary or superfluous, focusing on what is absolutely essential, knowing when to stop.

In many ways this is admirable. It is part of the self-restraint that has allowed Sweden to be an egalitarian society, a place where unions work harmoniously with industrialists, where people take their work seriously, but leave before 5pm to be with their families. But what I find hard to understand is how it makes sense as a lifestyle to aspire to. Many of the rituals, recipes and decoration ideas that filled out last year’s mountain of hygge books would fall outside the lagom threshold. To Swedes, they’d seem fussy, a bit much.

Mys, the Swedish counterpart to the cosy candles and cocoa side of hygge, very often means nothing more fancy than a takeaway pizza and Netflix.

One of the annoyances about living here is the shrugging non-reaction you often get if you do something extravagant or show-offy, like bringing marinated ribs or a fresh fish to a barbecue instead of the expected “varmkorv” frankfurters.

And while Danes are universally fanatical about hygge, Swedes can be quite conflicted about lagom.

In the Vogue article, the lagom ideal was explained through the country’s love of mellanmjölk, semi-skimmed milk that is neither unhealthily full-fat nor flavourless and watery. But in Sweden, to call a film, popstar, or decoration mellanmjölk is as likely to be an insult as a compliment. When the novelist and comedian Jonas Gardell called his 1990s standup show På besök i mellanmjölkens land, or “on a visit to the land of semi-skimmed milk”, he wasn’t expressing his love of Swedish moderation, he was expressing how out of place he felt as a gay man with an over-the-top personality.

Swedes in the arts will tell you they hate lagom, and the constraints it puts on self-expression and the audacity allowed in ideas (although they’ll probably say they love it too).

Being lagom also means being moderate in personality, views, and politics. When Swedish children are told skratta lagom, or teenagers are told to have lagom kul, it doesn’t mean “have a bit of a laugh”, or “have a bit of fun”, it means “don’t laugh too much”, or “don’t go over the top”. Swedes as a rule hate disagreeing, even during a dinner party debate, something which is incredibly frustrating to newcomers from cultures where getting worked up is a sign of engagement, a sign that you care. The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård describes getting into a heated row over a boozy supper and going to bed thinking he’d had a good night, only to find other guests feared relations were irreparably broken.

But perhaps the biggest objection to lagom as a lifestyle trend is that it is increasingly a myth. The last 20 years have seen Sweden shake off much of its reserve and self-restraint. Gardell, far from being over the top, is now a national treasure. Talent shows such as Swedish Idol show young people being exuberant in a new way. And anyone who has watched the footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Sweden’s latest export to the UK, strut his stuff, will recognise that there is a way of being Swedish that is anything but lagom.

This has even affected weddings, which my wife points out disapprovingly are becoming ever more Americanised.

Just as the Swedes are to my relief sloughing off the worst aspects of lagom, do the Brits really have to embrace it?