I realised something terribly profound whilst on the bus home today. That is: diets and religion follow the same principles.

The way I see it, the main goal of most religions is to make you a better person, so that you can move on after the end of your sorry earth existence into some sparkling and wonderful afterlife. And the main goal of a diet is, of course, to make you a better person physically, so that you can move on from the end of your sorry, fatter existence into some sparkling and wonderful, thinner life.

Take any diet to the extreme, and you're just going to do damage to yourself, by way of nutiritional deficiencies if not the results common to anorexia nervosa, for example osteroporosis and growth difficulties. Likewise, one over-zealous in their religion is likely to damage themselves- I don't know any fancy terms, but I can imagine at least their interpersonal relationships would suffer, ie they'd piss people off by trying to convert them. A diet or a religion in moderation, however, is going to do you good- you'll feel better even if you haven't lost weight, and personally you will (hopefully) feel closer to salvation.

However, there are so many diets, and so many religions, all mutually exclusive, all claiming to achieve the same overall goal- so which one to choose? What if you pick team Jesus, then Allah goes and smites the Earth? Bugger, it's Hell for you, no matter how good a Christian you were. You pick Atkins, only to find that all that fat you are eating is in fact turning your heart into a lump of lard and now damn, you're fat AND with a heart condition.

But if you remember the original goal, do you really need to choose a religion or a diet in the first place? Forget all the faddy celeb stuff, common sense shows that to lose weight, all you really need to do is eat less and exercise more. So, to be a better person and get to wherever it is you want to when you die, shouldn't you just do good things and be nice to people? Shouldn't that be enough?

I don't want to take the risk and pick one of the myriad diets available, in case it's a load of bullshit that'll do me more harm than good. Likewise, I don't want to pick one of the myriad religions available, in case I'm proved wrong at the end of my world. I feel I know how to lose weight, and how to be a good person, without following someone else's prescribed method of doing so. If you want to choose a way, fine, and I'm sure for most people it will get them where they want to go- I just don't think it's worth it when you think of all those that get lost along the way.

What this thought quite had to do with my bus journey, I have no idea.