Page 260 - Bridget Jones's Diary - by Helen FIELDING

'What's wrong with it? Chuh! Look at it.'

It turned Out there was a very, very tiny bump where someone had shoved a
glass in his face when he was seventeen. 'Do you see what I mean?'

My feeling was, as I explained, that the bump in itself couldn't be blamed for
Joan of Arc snatching the title from directly beneath it, as it were, unless the
judges were using a Hubble telescope, but then Tom started saying he was too

fat as well and was going on a diet.

'How many calories are you supposed to eat if you're on a diet?' he said.

'About a thousand. Well, I usually aim for a thousand and come in at about
fifteen hundred,' I said, realizing as I said it that the last bit wasn't strictly true.

'A thousand?' said Tom, incredulously. 'But I thought you needed two
thousand just to survive.'

I looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spent so many years being
on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been
completely wiped out of my conscious-ness. Have reached point where believe
nutritional ideal is to eat nothing at all and that the only reason people eat is
because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and
ruining their diets.

'How many calories in a boiled egg?' said Tom.

'Seventy-five.'

'Banana?'

'Large or small?'

'Small.'