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What a miserable lot dieters are! You can always recognize them from the sour expression on their faces. They spend most of their time turning their noses up at food. They are forever consulting calorie charts; gazing at themselves in mirrors; and leaping on to weighing-machines in the bathroom. They spend a lifetime fighting a losing battle against spreading hips, protruding tummies and double chins. Some wage all-out war on FAT. Mere dieting is not enough. They exhaust themselves doing exercises, sweating in sauna baths, being pummeled and massaged by weird machines. The really wealthy diet-mongers pay vast sums for health cures. For two weeks they can enter a nature clinic and be starved to death for a hundred guineas a week. Dont think its only the middle-aged who go in for these fads either. Many of these bright young things you see are suffering from chronic malnutrition: they are living on nothing but air, water and the goodwill of God. Dieters undertake to starve themselves of their own free will; so why are they so miserable? Well, for one thing, theyre always hungry. You cant be hungry and happy at the same time. All the horrible concoctions they eat instead of food leave them permanently dissatisfied. Wonderfood is a complete food, the advertisement says. Just dissolve a teaspoonful in water. A complete food it may be, but not quite as complete as a juicy steak. And, of course, theyre always miserable because they feel so guilty. Hunger just proves too much for them and in the end they lash out and devour five huge guilt-inducing cream cakes at a sitting. And who can blame them? At least three times a day they are exposed to temptation. What utter torture it is always watching others tucking into piles of mouth-watering food while you munch a water biscuit and sip unsweetened lemon juice! | 
