Journal for 2003 September 25

It seems like the more work Claudia gets, the less she wants to do. If she knows that she has exactly one thing to do, she'll work on it for hours on end. With more, it becomes progressively more important to spend time with friends, worry, and sleep. When she tells me that she doesn't enjoy any of this, I try to tell her that maybe it's not for her then; she hasn't allowed that possibility yet.

Claudia has also started dieting, using the newish "South Beach Diet". It looks pretty healthy and doable. Jocelyn was trying to convince Claudia that she had absolutely no need to diet. She argued that while Claudia's reasons sounded good, they were being generated by a mind unhealthy in the area of weight. I said that I had input: weight is the result of a very complex system, and it cannot be easily changed by simple-component specific policy changes (though this does seem possible for humans). Real change happens as the result of a new lifesyle with a number of different decisions. However, the decision to go on the diet is also the result of a very complex system, which ill not likely change in response to a single night of debate. The best thing to do, I said, was to support Claudia in her decisions, so that she would become more of the person who she wants to be. Then she will be more free of her own internal barriers to making health decisions, and one of those healthy decisions may well be to continue dieting.

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If you have any questions or comments that you want to email, feel free to contact me, jrising@ mit.edu.