DIET AND HEALTH
A BOOK
PAGE 2

Diet and Health With Key to the Calories - Page 2

Chapter 1

Preliminary Bout

Rule to Find Ideal Adult Net Weight

Multiply number of inches over 5 ft. in height by 5-1/2; add 110. For example: Height 5 ft. 7 in. without shoes.

     7 x 5-1/2  =    38-1/2
                  + 110
                   -------
     Ideal weight   148-1/2

If under 5 ft. multiply number of inches under 5 ft. by 5-1/2 and subtract from 110.

Are You Thin and Do You Want to Gain?

[Sidenote: _Don't Read This_]

Skip this chapter. It will not interest you in the least. I will come to you later. I am not particularly interested in you anyway, for I cannot get your point of view. How any one can want to be anything but thin is beyond my intelligence. However, knowing that there are such deluded individuals, I have been constrained to give you advice. You won't find it spontaneous nor from the heart, but if you follow my directions I will guarantee that you will gain; providing, of course, you have no organic trouble; and the chances are that by giving proper attention to your diet you will gain anyway, and maybe in passing lose your trouble. Who knows?

[Sidenote: _Bad Business_]

In war time it is a crime to hoard food, and fines and imprisonment have followed the exposé of such practices. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of individuals all over America who are hoarding food, and that one of the most precious of all foods! *They have vast amounts of this valuable commodity stored away in their own anatomy*.

Now fat individuals have always been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amusement, you are now viewed with distrust, suspicion, and even aversion! How dare you hoard fat when our nation needs it? You don't dare to any longer. You never wanted to be fat anyway, but you did not know how to reduce, and it is proverbial how little you eat. Why, there is Mrs. Natty B. Slymm, who is beautifully thin, and she eats twice as much as you do, and does not gain an ounce. You know positively that eating has nothing to do with it, for one time you dieted, didn't eat a thing but what the doctor ordered, besides your regular meals, and you actually gained.

You are in despair about being anything but fat, and --! how you hate it. But cheer up. I will save you; yea, even as I have saved myself and many, many others, so will I save you.

[Sidenote: _Spirituality vs. Materiality_]

[Sidenote: _A Long, Long Battle_]

It is not in vain that all my life I have had to fight the too, too solid. Why, I can remember when I was a child I was always being consoled by being told that I would outgrow it, and that when I matured I would have some shape. Never can I tell pathetically "when I was married I weighed only one hundred eighteen, and look at me now." No, I was a delicate slip of one hundred and sixty-five when I was taken.

I never will tell you how much I have weighed, I am so thoroughly ashamed of it, but my normal weight is one hundred and fifty pounds, and at one time there was seventy pounds more of me than there is now, or has been since I knew how to control it. I was not so shameless as that very long, and as I look back upon that short period I feel like refunding the comfortable salary received as superintendent of an hospital; for I know I was only sixty-five per cent efficient, for efficiency decreases in direct proportion as excess weight increases. Everybody knows it.

The Meeting Is Now Open for Discussion

Jolly Mrs. Sheesasite has the floor and wants some questions answered. You know Mrs. Sheesasite; her husband recently bought her a pair of freight scales.

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Sheesasite_]

"Why is it, Doctor, that thin people can eat so much more than fat people and still not gain?"

[Sidenote: _Me Answering_]

"First: Thin people are usually more active than fat people and use up their food.

"Second: Thin people have been proved to radiate fifty per cent more heat per pound than fat people; in other words, fat people are regular fireless cookers! They hold the heat in, it cannot get out through the packing, and the food which is also contained therein goes merrily on with fiendish regularity, depositing itself as fat.

[Illustration: Fireless Cookers.]

"And there are baby fireless cookers and children fireless cookers. The same dietetic rules apply to them as to the adult."

"I recognize Mrs. Tiny Weyaton; then you, Mrs. Knott Little."

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Weyaton_]

"We have heard you say that fat people eat too much, and still we eat so little?"

[Sidenote: _Me Again_]

"Yes, you eat too much, _no matter how little it is_, even if it be only one bird-seed daily, _if you store it away as fat_. For, hearken; food, and food only (sometimes plus alcohol) maketh fat. Not water--not air--verily, nothing but food maketh fat. (And between you and me, Mrs. Weyaton, just confidential like--don't tell it--we know that the small appetite story is a myth.)"

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Knott Little_]

"But, Doctor, is it not true that some individuals inherit the tendency to be fat, and can not help it, no matter what they do?"

[Sidenote: _Doctor_]

"Answer to first part--Yes.

"Answer to second part--No! It is not true that they cannot help it; they have to work a little harder, that is all. It is true that being fat is a disease with some, due to imperfect working of the internal secretory glands, such as the thyroid, generative glands, etc.; but that is not true fat such as you have. Yours, and that of the other members who are interested, is due to overeating and underexercising.

[Sidenote: _Not_?]

"Those diseased individuals should be under the care of a physician. Probably the secretory glands are somewhat inactive or sluggish in the healthy fat individual. I use the word _healthy_ here in contradistinction to the other type. In reality, individuals very much overweight are not really healthy, and they should also visit their physician."

"Yes, Mrs. Ima Gobbler?"

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Ima Gobbler_]

[Sidenote: _Doctor Dear_]

"But, Doctor dear, what's the use of dieting? I only get fatter after I stop."

(Webmaster's Note: When people go off a diet, their metabolisms have often slowed down so that if they eat the same food as before, the body uses less and stores more as fat.)

(Answering delicate like, for I'm fond of her and she is sensitive):

"You fat--! You make me fatigued! _You never diet long enough_ to get out of the fireless cooker class. _If you did, you wouldn't."_

"Is there anyone else who would like to be recognized? No?"

[Sidenote: _Nothing That I Don't Know_]

It is well. I will probably answer more as I go along, for there is nothing that I don't know or haven't studied or tried in the reducing line. I know everything you have to contend with--how you no sooner congratulate yourself on your will power, after you have dragged yourself by the window with an exposure of luscious fat chocolates with curlicues on their tummies, than another comes into view, and you have it all to go through with again, and how you finally succumb.

I hope sometime it will be a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment, to display candy as shamelessly as it is done.

Many fond parents think that candy causes worms. It doesn't, of course, unless it is contaminated with worm eggs, but, personally, I wish every time I ate a chocolate I would get a worm, then I would escape them. The chocolates, I mean. I will tell you more about worms when I discuss meat.

[Sidenote: _Vampires_]

[Sidenote: _Malicious Animal Magnetism?_]

I know how you go down to destruction for peanuts, with their awful fat content. It is terrible, the lure a peanut has for me. Do you suppose Mr. Darwin could explain that?

Perhaps I was a little too delicate like in my answer to Mrs. Gobbler's question,--What's the use of dieting, she only gets fatter after she stops?

So many ask me that question, with the further pathetic addition,--Will they always have to keep it up? And it ever irritates me.

The answer is,--Yes! You will always have to keep up dieting, just as you always have to keep up other things in life that make it worth living--being neat, being kind, being tender; reading, studying, loving.

You will not have to be nearly so strenuous after you get to normal; but you might as well recognize now, and accept it as a fact, that neither you nor anybody else will be able to eat beyond your needs without accumulating fat or disease, or both.

I love Billy Sunday's classical answer to the objection that his conversions were not permanent. He responded: "Neither is a bath!"

WHEN YOU START TO REDUCE you will have the following to combat:

[Sidenote: _A Combat_]

First: Your husband, who tells you that he does not like thin women. I almost hate my husband when I think how long he kept me under that delusion. Now, of course, I know all about his jealous disposition, and how he did not want me to be attractive.

[Illustration: _Green!_]

Second: Your sister, who says, "Goodness, Lou, but you look old today; you looked lots better as you were."

[Illustration: _Sweet Peace_]

Third: Your friends, who tell you that you are just right now; don't lose another pound! And other friends who tell you cheerful tales of people they have known who reduced, and who went into a decline, and finally died.

[Sidenote: _To Avoid Slack in Your Neck, Double and Triple Chins, Massage Vigorously Up and Down, Not Crossways_]

[Sidenote: _I Am Interesting_]

But you must not mind them. Smile, and tell them that you know all about it, and don't worry. Go serenely on your way, confident in your heart that you will look fully ten years younger when you get down to normal, no matter how you look in the interim. I don't see why women, and men, too, (secretly) worry so much about wrinkles. If the increased wrinkles on the face are accompanied by increased wrinkles in the gray matter, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. I'm sure I am much more interesting with wrinkles than I was without. I am to myself, anyway.

However, you will not be any more wrinkled if you reduce gradually, as I advise, and keep up your exercise at least fifteen minutes daily.

[Sidenote: _I Have a Beautiful Complexion_]

[Sidenote: _I Attended an Art School Six Months Once_]

Take care of your face, alternate hot and cold water, glycerine one-quarter, rose water three-quarters, cold cream packs, massage gently, a little ice--you know what to do--you need not fear. You will not only look ten years younger and live twenty years longer--I assert it boldly--but your complexion and efficiency will be one hundred per cent better.

[Sidenote: _Joy_!]

If there is anything comparable to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it. And when you find your corset coming closer and closer together (I advise a front lace, so this can be watched), and then the day you realize that you will have to stitch in a tuck or get a new one!

But don't be in a hurry to make your clothes smaller now. If they are loose they will show to the world that you are reducing. A fat person in a tight suit, unless it is perfectly new, should be interned.

[Sidenote: _Food Only_]

[Sidenote: _Impossible_]

I have said that food, and food only, causes fat. That gives you the cue to what you must do to get rid of it. No anti-fat medicines unless under the supervision of your scientific, educated physician. They are dangerous; most of them contain thyroid extract, arsenic, or mercury. Even the vendors of these harmful compounds in their advertisements are now saying to "stop harmful drugging," but urge you to adopt their particular delightful product, and, "without dieting or exercises, you will positively reduce", and so forth.

No drastic purges, no violent exercises, especially at first, and not too frequent nor prolonged Turkish baths. Epsom salts baths have little effect. If salts are used habitually internally, they are harmful. All of these are unscientific and unsuccessful, and the things they bring on are worse than the fat.

Now, if food is the only source of body substance, you see that you must study that question, and that is what I will give you--some lessons on foods and their values.

[Sidenote: _Candy Cake, Pie, Rich Meats, Thick Gravy, Bread, Butter, Nuts, Ice Cream_]

[Sidenote: _Whipped Cream, Candied Sweet Potatoes_]

Heretofore you have known only in a dumb, despairing sort of way that all the foods you like are fattening, and all the advice you read and hear is that you must avoid them as a pestilence. And you settle down to your joyless fatness, realizing that it is beyond human strength to do that forever, and that you would rather die young and fat, anyway, than to have nothing to eat all your life but a little meat, fish, and sloshy vegetables. Study on, and you will find the reason your favorite foods are fattening.

But cast off your dejection. _You don't have to avoid them_!

Eat what you like and grow thin? Yes; follow me. I know it will be an exertion, but you must persist and go through with it. Nothing in life worth while is attained without some effort. So begin now; it is the price of liberty.

_Review_

1. Give rule for normal weight.

2. How much excess food have you stored away?

3. Why more important than ever to reduce?

4. Why are fat individuals fireless cookers?

5. Give causes of excess fat.

NOTE: The Reviews which follow the chapters are important and the questions should be answered. To get the full benefit, Little Book must be studied, for it is the only authorized textbook of the "Watch Your Weights."

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P. S. If you want to learn more about why Diets Don't Work, please click here.

If you want to learn how to burn fat, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto