ABOUT ME

So, who is Dr Idiot?

It seems pretty common in these introductory sections to discuss one's journey. It would then make sense for me to discuss my 'food journey' to explain how I have ended up writing a website and why you should listen to me. But to me a food journey is either the short walk to the local mini mart, or the bus ride to the food court.

I don't feel the need to follow this modern custom of exaggerating the profundity of my food experiences, by supporting such a semantic shift. If you want to understand a little about me and how I ended up here, read below and I will tell you how it all started, how it continued and how it's currently going. Scroll down to learn more on my life food expedition.

How it started

My mum is kind enough to remind me, whenever company is suitably embarrassing, that I was a ‘painfully big baby’. Further recounts of tearing conjure images that have stopped me sleeping for many a night. The papers of the day were not drawn to report any records being broken, but the midwives agreed that I was a ‘biggun’. However, such comparative size was only noticeable within the hospital. Once I left the safe and sterile environment of the maternity ward, to be welcomed into the Diot family home, I became rather normal. We are, as some would report us, a big family in mass rather than number.

Family photos display a standard solidity amongst my nearest and dearest and it was only when I began to step outside of my immediate lineage, that I became aware that not everyone shared the Diot robustness. That is not to say I worried about it or felt judged for it. In fact, on many occasions, I was celebrated. I was the child with the healthy appetite. The one who showed appreciation for the effort people had put into preparing my food. In comparison to many of my peers, who took to throwing meals off tables when it was placed in front of them, my tantrums came when I wasn’t allowed to eat, rather than when I was being encouraged to do so.

There may have been a time when I began to feel that there was something undesirable in being found further up the charts than most of my classmates, but I don’t remember it. There was no seminal moment in which I suddenly decided I wanted to change. There was no look in the mirror, or glance at a photo, that made me aware of my relative size. We are, after all, a wonderful array of shapes and sizes and when I looked around me, I saw very few bigger, many smaller but some the same size. I generally felt I was in the mix. I was soon told otherwise.

It seems that all of us are assessed and ranked from birth onward. We are continually exposed to an array of tests, grades, exams, and judgements that are designed to let us know our place amongst our contemporaries. Within this battery of appraisals, our height and weight are graded all the way through childhood and in many instances well beyond. This should be no surprise, as it reflects our love to measure where we can. Just as the nurses in the hospital were able to report my unusual size through standard and practiced forms of assessment, it is not uncommon to ask children, or adults, to pop on scales or stand up straight as we evaluate and categorise in a way that is easy to do.

Now, I am not necessarily against this. It can be hard to judge one’s own characteristics and, just as with school, a series of tests and measures can be useful in informing us where we stand on the developmental pathway. But the question should be asked, why are we so obsessed with our weight? Maths scores or reading ages are considered important at a certain time but are often relegated to inconsequence in later years. Interest in our athletic prowess, maximum bench press or five kilometre run times become important to some for a period of time, but often don’t endure. Whereas considerations around our weight seem to persist throughout the life course and for many of us are a constant presence. We seem to be burdened with such concern over how much we weigh, that we carry it with us through all elements of our life.

Of course, as a species we like nothing more than to judge, classify and categorise, and the medical world will tell us that one’s weight is an important determinant of wellbeing throughout one’s entire life. But it is only one measurement amongst a range of options and our focus on it persists for two key reasons. The first is that in many ways it is on display at all times. It can be hard to glance around a room and gauge people’s blood pressure or cholesterol levels. The second is that we can all measure it. Until bathroom scales are replaced by equipment that allows us to see everything that lurks beneath our surface, we will use weight in place of a number of alternatives. And yes, whilst some of us may need to consider such things, we should not condense our entire worth, or the worth of those around us, to the digits being displayed on common bathroom technology.

Not only are there are a whole range of personal characteristics that go into making us who we are, from empathy, to humour, to humility, but even when focusing on mass, we have to acknowledge that the human body comes in a range of forms. Such that reducing them all into one comparable measurement has it challenges. We are not cast from the same mold, so whilst using the same approach to measure all of us may tell us something, it far from paints the whole picture.

How it continued

I am short of limb and long of body. Imagine, if you will, a sausage dog in human form. This seems to give me little advantage in life, save perhaps for on cinema trips, when my seated height allows me to see over those in front, whilst my short limbs mean that I retain ample leg room. Unfortunately, abnormal physical dimensions such as these can be particularly trying in the purchasing of clothes. The bigger one is around the chest, or the taller from hip to shoulder, the longer the designer assumes one will be in the arms. Heaven help any poor soul whose torso to leg ratio does not match the proportions of a standard twinset. Clothes shops may take an ongoing interest in the changing shape of the consumer, but I for one never seem to fit the proportions of an off the peg suit. Leaving me to roll sleeves and trousers up or pull jackets and jumpers down.

I remember one particularly difficult day during my teenage years, in which a classmate had acquired a magazine for the developing adolescent, in which the editor had seen fit to include an article that helped readers classify their bodies from a number of taxonomies. We argued for some time over our own and each other’s categorisation. All of us hoping to identify with the tall athletic model and none wanting to accept the short squat profile of the less socially desirable figures.

However, whilst my friends argued heatedly over each other’s classification, for me the whole activity was a distressing realisation that I fitted into none of the supposedly exhaustive body shapes. This had gone unnoticed for some time, until my friends, and I use the word loosely, found that a good way of deflecting attention away from their own disappointment was to point out that others had it worse.

With the typical teenager being quite comfortable delivering acts of cruelty, my friends felt it only right to adapt the article with a specially designed sketch that they felt reflected my unusual contours and proportions. Such attention did little to alleviate my self-consciousness and I subsequently excused myself from the rest of the term’s swimming lessons. I have ever since hated the impossible taxonomic system of human body shapes and the smell of glossy paper.

Life becomes problematic when we try to live by averages. We are all individuals, and we should celebrate this wonderful array of form and figure. If one were to walk around a zoo, it would prove foolish to compare the incumbents on gorilla island to those in rodent house. But if all animals looked, sounded, and acted the same, the National Geographic channel would struggle to sell advertising space and David Attenborough would have been out of a job sometime into his seventies. They may be different species, but the fact remains that life would be tedious and dull if we were all identical in act and outline. And we would do well to consider that the next time we try to set each other identical goals.

How it's going

Having got all of that off my chest, I should probably explain why I started this blog. A question I asked myself quite a lot over the time it took me to do so. Writing, it turns out, is a lot harder than people think. It surprises me that writers are not given more credit for what they do.

It has become clear to me that if one is to start writing a book or a website and is actually to get around to finishing it, one must have a strong motivation for doing so. Some writers, I suppose, just have to write. It is their calling and their life seems incomplete without putting pen to paper, or tapping away at a keyboard. For others, motivation may come from a burning desire to impart the story that has filled them for weeks, months, or years. They are unable to keep it buried any longer and must share it with the world. Perhaps others just love writing. Bizarrely as it may sound to any students struggling to finish their English homework.

I am different. Annoyance and frustration were the driving forces that kept me ranting in text long enough to create the pages you currently hold in your hand. This guide came about because I am fed up. Fed up with not being the size I want. Fed up with not being the shape I want. And fed up with not looking the way I want. I am also fed up with the hundreds of pounds I have spent on diet books that only ever led to a lightening of my bank balance. I am annoyed by the overwhelming range of guidance I have purchased and annoyed that none of it helped. I am, therefore, quite annoyed by the so-called experts who wrote it. Mostly because I am annoyed by the amount of money they are making from peoples’ insecurities, but also because much of that money was my own.

I thought I would channel this annoyance into my very own diet book, which could also be purchased by a lot of people. Before you say anything, I recognise the irony of writing a diet book to condemn other diet books. But my diet book is different. Firstly, no one wanted to publish it. Secondly, whereas others are limited in their scope, trying to change one or two aspects of a person’s lifestyle, or proposing a focus on very rigid food regimes. Mine will - attempt to - cover all the factors that influence what people eat. This is not another fad diet. This is not a short-term measure. What is held within this blog is neither recipes nor motivational mantra; it is a new life for you, the reader.

This is the complete package. Through these pages I help you understand the factors that got you into a position in which you feel the need to buy a diet book or searching for advice on the internet. I cover the whole spectrum of influences: personal, social, environmental and cultural. I help you explore yourself with my specially developed questionnaires. I counter and correct the myths that have been holding you back. I tell you how you can use these negative factors to your advantage with my targeted diets and exercise plans. I share the letters my ‘patients’ could have written to me asking for my assistance and I help you shake off the social norms and beliefs that have held you back, by encouraging you to think outside of the many boxes that encase us.

Some may question why people should listen to me when it comes to healthy living. Whilst it is true that I do not have the Oxbridge or Ivy League degree. And that I may not have built up the patient centred career, or the years of medical training and health service experience that some like to claim makes them an expert, I argue that I bring something different. I learnt my lessons the hard way. I didn’t take notes in lectures, or train under mentors. I learnt from life. I was – and remain – where you are now,searching the internet in the hope that I could find the answers I like. But I never did. ‘And why was that?’ I hear you ask. Well, that is either because the factors that determine what we eat are so complex that they cannot be overcome through one website or book, or it is just that that guide hadn’t been written …. until now.