The No Diet Diet

Moose took pity on me this week - something about seeing me go completely fruit-loops over todays interview (and why on why do you always think of the perfect answers to questions on the train home?) made her step up to the plate and write the following. Good Moose

The spirit of self-improvement has permeated through Meadow Towers and I have finally succumbed. While trawling through the library the other day I came across the No Diet Diet. The authors posit the theory that, generally, thin people have a positive attitude on life and fat people have a negative attitude. Therefore, if you are over weight and you improve you attitude your weight will reduce. Now, appreciating the fact that I’ve just reduced 60 pages of text to two lines, you can’t help being a little sceptical at such a broad statement. However, I am more than aware that my attitude towards life could do with some adjustments, so having read through the 4 week programme I’ve decided to give it a go.

Each day there is a task, one which is designed to help you break habits. The day 2 task was to spend 15 minutes writing – something you wouldn’t normally write. I’m always amazed at how much Cas puts herself ‘out there’ on the blog. Sharing personal stories with the great unknown scares me frankly. So that’s what I’ve decided to write and she has agreed to post it for me. This is how a short story changed my life.

I don’t like my name. Positively loathe it. Ever since I’ve been little it’s been shortened and that’s fine with me, but my full name I just can’t stand. When I was a teenager I decided that as soon as I was old enough, and had the money, I would officially change my name. I began looking for alternatives and had quite a list by the time I was 19 and then something happened. I read a book by Gloria Naylor called The Women of Brewster Place.

It’s a series of short stories all set in the same apartment complex. One of the stories is about a militant young African American woman and her mother. The young woman is determined to change her name because it’s a ‘slave name’, given to her by her ancestor’s owners. Her mother is upset. She wonders what slave owners have got to do with it; she and her father gave the young woman her name. She sees it as the young woman’s rejection of her parents. It made me stop and think. My parents gave me my name. I didn’t have a name for the first week of my life because they couldn’t decide which name would suit me best, so I know they put a lot of thought into it. They would be upset if I rejected their name. So I didn’t change it. I still don’t like my full name and only use it on official paperwork but I’ve learned to live with it.