There are a few intrinsic differences between men and women. Outside of the obvious.

They’ll never understand why Pretty Woman is an example of classic cinema, just like we don’t get why they had to make a Die Hard 4. (Seriously – weren’t the first three enough? Like John McClane is the only man around when terrorists strike?)

They just don’t get why we cry when we are sad and happy or feeling varying emotions in between, and we don’t understand why they try not to show their emotions at all.

And most men will never understand why women will turn into blubbering idiots when they spot the most perfect shoes/bag/belt (insert item here) ever on sale and will quite happily hand over the equivalent of a small African nation's GDP for it, but will haggle over the price of fruit and vegies.

But there is one key difference between men and women and it played out in my kitchen the other night.

Alex and I had just finished dinner (miracle of miracles, I had cooked.) when I asked if he wanted seconds.

“No thanks,” he said, patting an almost non-existent pot belly.

“Pants are feeling a bit tight. I need to cut back.”

And then he wandered over to the television, turned on some stupid video game and began playing while I stood there gaping like an idiot.

Because that was it.

There were no detailed explanations of where the weight needed to come from, why he thought he had put on weight in the first place and what the plan of attack was to lose it.

And that, ladies and gents, is one of the main differences between men and women.

Most women I know are on an eternal quest to lose “just five kilos or so”.

I’m one of them.

Even when I was 16 and weighed something ridiculous like 55 kilos, I still wanted to lose another five kilos.

So we turn food into something that makes us either “good” or “bad” instead of something which is designed to sustain us.

Don’t believe me?

Does this sound familiar? “I was so bad today, I had like two chocolate biscuits” or “I was really good today, I just had a salad for lunch.”

Either of those statements can carry enough power to send us either into the depths of despair or the heights of elation.

If we give in at the supermarket and buy the bad food, we hide it when we get home – like our cravings will forget there are Tim Tams in the house if we put them in the fruit and vegie crisper!

And if men feel like a biscuit, they’ll have a biscuit and leave it at that.

If I feel like a biscuit, I’ll eat a carrot, some rice cakes, drink about three litres of water, have a cup of tea, eat some more rice cakes and then give in and gorge myself on the biscuits anyway, feeling disgustingly guilty even as the sweet, sweet chocolate taste fills my senses.

When men go out to dinner, they order what they really feel like and then eat a little healthier for the rest of the week.

When women go out to dinner, it’s almost like survival of the fittest.

We gaze longily at the creamy pastas and fried foods like starving people, but then righteously order a salad or baked fish or something equally mundane – all the while watching our friends like hawks to see who is going to be the “bad one” who breaks and orders the chips.

We then spend the next 15 minutes egging on each other to break our diets (“Come on, you’ve been so good – one bowl of chips isn’t going to hurt” or “You went to the gym last night – what does it matter. You don’t need to lose weight anyway.”)

Meanwhile, the poor wait staff look on in exasperation.

Then we encourage the poor soul who looks like breaking: “Go on, live a little!”

We laugh, all the while feeling a little smug because we resisted the temptation.

And that smugness stays with us even as we sneak one of her wedges or chips to spice up our salad, because after all – we deserve something bad, for being so good and resisting in the first place.

And that smugness is only reinforced by her continued justification for ordering the offending, but oh so yummy item in the first place.

I tried explaining that to Alex, but he just looked at me blankly and asked why.

And I didn’t have an answer for him.

Is it the media? Peer pressure? Posh Spice? Our continued search for what we think is perfection?

All I know is that it has me and most women I know in its grip and I’m not sure how to get out of it.

Which makes me depressed.

Which is why, as soon as I finish this, I’ll be hunting out the Chickos I hid behind the spices in the cupboard yesterday.

Hey – the packet says they are 98% fat-free and I went to the gym yesterday – so I can be a little bad, can’t I?