What is the female obsession with a 1200 calorie diet?

What does the *needs* imply. I honestly am new to forums and I have no clue what the *** things are about.

It's old-school internet stuff. This forum doesn't support underlining, bolding, italics -- it doesn't let you mark up text for emphasis.

Back in the day when *most* online forums were plain-text-only, lots of us got in the habit of using ** to indicate emphasis. It survives into MS Outlook, actually -- if you have Autocorrect turned on, and you type something between asterisks like that? It automatically bolds the text.