What is it about women and their diets? It is a bit like an obscene obsession isn’t it? They have to be on a diet. It’s a basic requirement to be a true woman you see – it is as essential as wearing lipstick, face makeup, having hair done, wearing pretty dresses, or buying shoes.

Women who have eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia are classified as medically sick, but women with a permanent diet problem are considered normal – how the hell can that be?

So exactly what is a diet? Well, it is a daily food allowance that, whatever is available, restricts what you eat or how much you eat – it’s like a self imposed punishment really. Ex-public schoolboys seem to like being beaten and we all think that is strange behaviour, while women on masochistic diets are still considered normal – what a funny world we live in eh?

Women can tackle many types of diet with total gusto– they are focused, determined, resilient, and obsessive. They live every day in hope of a new diet being announced, so they can have a go at it – despite already having a choice of hundreds of thousands already published (and many already sampled); low carbohydrate, low calorie, vegetable, low fat, crash, etc; and to name some of them – the Atkins diet, the Cambridge diet, the Zone diet , the Vegetarian diet, the Vegan diet, the Weight Watchers diet , the South Beach diet , the Raw Food Diet, the Cabbage Soup diet, the Grapefruit diet, the Watermelon diet, the Diabetic diet, the Gluten-free diet, the Liquid diet, the Avoidance diet! Popular at the moment the 5-2 diet when 2 days a week (not necessarily consecutive though) you starve yourself (well you have a little food) so you can really feel hunger pains and wish you were pregnant and could eat for two.

Men talk about football, goals scored & missed, or boast about a win on the horses, while women talk about diets, food recipes, and how many pounds they have lost or might lose on their current diet.

A Man’s Diet

Start with a hearty Breakfast: Cereal to get in early nearly a day’s supply of sugar & salt (sweetened, sugar or honey, corn flakes with a fruit yogurt), then 2 fried bacon rashers, 2 sausages, 2 eggs (fried), fried bread (healthy wholemeal and only ½ slice), fried potatoes (only 1 medium sliced), baked beans (smallish portion) washed down with some calcium filled whole milk (½ pint only). Sugary milky tea, with 2 slices of buttered toast and marmalade, to finish off.

Frugal Lunch: no food on this diet, only 3 or 4 pints of beer to null the pain of the diet

Nibbles: chocolate bar (only 1 or 2)

Decent Dinner to make up for lunch & afternoon nibble: a large gin & tonic to improve appetite & digestion then some Red meat (½ lb Steak), fried chips (large portion), breaded onions, bread & butter (only 2 slices) and to follow jam roly-poly with cream and custard. Red wine (only ½ bottle).

Bedtime Snack: Drinking chocolate with 2 digestive biscuits for dunking

TOTAL DAY’S CALORIES: seven thousand or so

A Woman’s Diet

Breakfast: Tea with semi skimmed milk, a boiled egg (small), slice of toast with low cal spread (1 slice), and a glass of fresh orange juice (small)

Lunch: banana (small) & glass tap water

Nibbles: cup of tea (1 with semi-skimmed milk no sugar)

Dinner: tuna salad (with lettuce, cucumber, a spring onion [part only], celery (1 heart stalk), tomato (1 small) together with a glass of tap water

TOTAL DAY’S CALORIES: five hundred only

Boring but they lose weight before going onto the next diet!

[The recommended intake  t0 ‘maintain’  the ‘current weight’ for a Women is two thousand calories, and for a Man is two and a half  thousand calories]