IF anyone was in doubt that men are the more intelligent sex, here it is - research has shown women spend ten years of their lives dieting.

While men are happily scoffing bacon butties, chips and pies with extra lard all washed down with a gallon of Guinness, the fairer sex is nibbling on cucumber, going to Pilates and sipping diet cola.

And the funniest part is that women are putting themselves through purgatory for the benefit of men.

The research was conducted by natural weight management supplement LIPObind, which says it polled 4,000 women.

It found that the typical British woman will go on two healthy-eating plans every year, with each one lasting an average of five weeks.

That adds up to 104 diets between the ages of 18 and 70 and a total of ten years watching what they eat.

Now, at the risk of alienating every woman reader and receiving poison pen letters in the post, The Diary - which, naturally, is genderless - thinks it's about time women lightened up and ate what they want, on the proviso of course that they don't get above a size ten dress size or look like a trussed-up turkey when wearing a bikini.