I hate my metabolism. On average, when I'm sitting on my arse doing nothing, I last maybe two or three hours before I need to eat something.

I am one of those people who can eat anything and everything and not put on weight. I'm constantly told, "Oh, you're so lucky!" What the people saying that don't realise, however, is that I have to eat that amount to stop myself from feeling horribly unwell.

I have to have three large meals per day and I have to eat at least one snack in between each meal, or else I get joint aches, headaches, can't concentrate and end up sleeping twelve or fourteen hours a night because I'm so exhausted. Since glucose levels also affect the serotonin system, if I don't get enough to eat I can easily have a depressive episode and stop thinking rationally on top of all that.

The "not thinking rationally" part really does not help, because I have before ended up trapped in a cycle where I've concluded that I will feel better about myself if I lose weight, so I eat even less, so I get more depressed and more irrational and - the phrase "downward spiral" is rather apt.

The point of all this is that I have a date tomorrow, with a girl who is bubbly and weird and wholly herself and generally awesome, but who is also a model and a natural size six (UK size - US size two, I think) and doesn't understand my pain. I know from experience that she can function perfectly well for 72 hours on one meal - that one weekend I had to do the same, and I was so unwell as a result that it took me a full week to recover.

And. Um. I'm not sure there are any food places where we're going. Oops.