Dying to Diet

Dieting is the meal of the day this week. One friend is on the particularly strenuous cabbage soup diet (urging me that she has lost 7 pounds in a week). Another friend is eating off a strict plan from the Doctor and spending every spare moment sweating it off in the gym. Although winning in the eccentric stakes this week is another friend who assures me that by keeping her body in a state of constant motion she will indeed reach her desired weight. All very well, but her consistent toe tapping and drumming on the table is rather infuriating.

At voting time for the Leaver’s Dinner Awards (Northern Ireland’s answer to the Oscar’s) a rather pass remarkable acquaintance told me she was voting for a girl in the aptly named “I’m so vain” category because she was ‘skinny’.

This is also the time for the art coursework, and I do hope that after it’s completion one of the art students will start eating again. Her work, entitled ‘Thinspiration”, while being very good, is making me worry for her health. I have tried subtly wafting thai sweet chilli crisps under her nose, but to no avail. Not even smoky bacon flavour entice her. Something is seriously wrong.

I am not on the cabbage soup diet/ the atkins diet/ the weight watchers diet/ the zone diet/ the south beach diet/ the blood type diet or indeed any other diet than watching my weight.

But I seem to be alone. All the more chips for me.