DIET AND HEALTH BOOK
HOW TO REDUCE
PAGE 9

How to Reduce - Diet and Health - Page 9

Chapter 8

At Last! How to Reduce

The title of this chapter indicates to whom it is addressed. All others please refrain from reading, for it is strictly private and confidential, and is intended only for those who need it.

You thin and you normal had better save it, though, for you may qualify
later. You are keeping right on reading now! I'm surprised. I wanted to
tell my fat friends that the first thing they have to do is to get
control of their will power, and now I can't do it.

Somehow, will power with a layer of fat on it gets feeble. Don't laugh,
you too thin! It gets worse than feeble, if there is no fat at all and
the nervous system is starved, it--well, I won't say what it does, for I
don't want to worry you.

Now That Order Is Restored I Will Resume

Will power, being feeble to a greater or less degree, must be bolstered
and aided a bit, to begin with, so--

First Order

Watch Your Weight!

Nature Always Counts

Tell loudly and frequently to all your friends that you realize that it
is unpatriotic to be fat while many thousands are starving, that you are
going to reduce to normal, and will be there in the allotted time. If
you belong to a club, round up the overweights and form a section. Call
it the "Watch Your Weight--Anti-Kaiser Class." Tax the members
sufficiently to buy a good, accurate pair of scales. Meet once a week to
weigh. Wear approximately the same weight clothes, and weigh at the same
time in relation to eating. Do this whether or not you belong to a club.
Once or twice a week is often enough to weigh. Scales vary, so try to
use the same ones.

Don't be discouraged if some day after you have dieted well you seem to
have gained. Nature sometimes seems fiendish that way. The excess weight
is probably due to a retention of water, and will not be permanent.
However, don't depend upon this too often! Usually, if you have gained
when you think you ought not to, it is because Nature has been counting
calories and you haven't.

Have the members listed on a weight chart conspicuously placed near the
scales, and record accurately the weight weekly.

     +-------------------------------------------------------+
     |            WATCH YOUR WEIGHT ANTI-KAISER CLASS        |
     +-------------------------------------------------------+
     |                  |Normal|          Weight on          |
     +------------------+------+-----------------------------+
     |  Members' Names  |Weight|Date|Date|Date|Date|Date|Date|
     +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
     |                  |      |    |    |    |    |    |    |
     +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
     |                  |      |    |    |    |    |    |    |
     +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
     |                  |      |    |    |    |    |    |    |
     +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
     |                  |      |    |    |    |    |    |    |
     +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
     |                  |      |    |    |    |    |    |    |
     +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+

No Funds for the Red Cross

Those not reducing at least one pound per week to be fined soundly and
the proceeds given to the Red Cross. That won't be a good way to raise
funds for the chapter, though, for there will be no fines after the
first week or so, when the members find what their maintenance diet
should be and are consuming less than that.

I will explain this maintenance diet business. You shameless thin ones,
call back your more polite comrades--this is important for all of you.
(I shall also tell you more fully about this in the last chapter.)

Maintenance Diet

The maintenance diet is one which maintains you at your present weight,
_i.e.,_ you are not gaining or losing. You may be over or under normal,
but are staying there. The intake equals the outgo.

When you eat less than your maintenance diet, you are going to supply
the deficiency with your own fat.

So commit yourself on your honor that you are going to reduce or
perish--no joke; you can't tell how near you are to it if you are much
overweight. There are two general stages of fatty heart. In the first
stage the heart is surrounded by a blanket of fat, and it also
penetrates between the muscles. Later, if it goes on too long, the heart
muscle itself degenerates to fat, then--

Good-night!

(Webmaster's note:  This is perhaps an oversimplified view of what can
happen to your heart without proper exercise and diet, but, frightfully
accurate in general, especially when considering it was written almost
100 years ago!)

Shakespeare warns you to make thy body less, hence thy grace more; leave
gormandizing, and know that the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider
than for other men.

Second Order

Shrink Your Stomach

Your stomach, long used to an excess of food for your needs--it may not
be a large amount--but still, I repeat, being used to an excess of food
for your needs, your stomach must be disciplined. It is undoubtedly
distended, as it should not be.

A good way to show it that you are master is to fast for at least one
day--drink nothing but pure water, hot or cold, as you prefer. It will
protest vociferously and will tell all its friends, the different organs
of your body, how you are persecuting it, and they will join the league
against you and decide they will oust you from your position, and you
will feel like--but don't mind it; it will soon know that you mean
business, and, much chastened and considerably contracted, will take the
next day a very small amount of food very gratefully.

If you do not want to be so severe with it you can allow it five glasses
of hot or cold skim milk or buttermilk, one every three hours, say, at
10,1,4,7, and 10 o'clock. One glass is 80 calories, five equal 400
calories, which is not so much.

Or Mashed

The baked potato and glass of skim milk diet, three times a day one day
a week, which has its devotees, depends upon its low caloric content for
its results. There is no magic in it, no yeast business which reduces.
This is most wholesome, however, for potatoes contain a large amount of
the potassium salts, which tend to counteract the effects of uric acid,
and thus are good for the gouty type.

Mono-Diets

(Webmaster's note:  I do not recommend diets, because diets don't work!
They are not a healthy means of weight loss.  I include the following without
endorsement, simply because it it part of the original work which I have
published here for your pleasure and enlightenment.)

The beefsteak, the milk, and the fruit diets are also good. One can gain
as well as lose on the milk diet, all depending on number of calories
consumed, and it is an excellent method for both. The beefsteak diet is
beneficial for a short time, but too much protein over a long period has
been shown to be harmful. An exclusive fruit diet is excellent for
reduction.

Low calorie days can be repeated once a week if necessary in order to
keep the stomach in good order. Fruit juice, one-quarter glass, or fresh
fruit, can be substituted for the skim milk, and you may prefer it.

But You Do Not Have To

You could keep on this for some time, or fast for some time, and
probably be much benefited. I fasted five days once, or rather
fruit-juiced five days. I lost about ten pounds, I think, and my heart,
which had begun to carry on, was relieved.

Sob Stuff

It was during that period of which I have spoken, and of which I am
ashamed; for I had my M.D. degree then and should have known better. But
you know we have good authority that it is easier to teach twenty what
were good to be done than to be one of twenty to follow our own
teaching.

Third Order

You Are Down to Business

And Maybe Diabetes

Now you will have to reckon on the amount of food or number of calories
you need per day. Review the rule I have given. You find for your age
and _normal weight_ that you will need, let us say for example, 2200
calories. You have probably been consuming twice that amount and either
storing it away as fat or as disease. (It is surprising how small an
excess will gradually add up pounds of fat. For instance, three pats of
butter or three medium chocolate creams a day, if over the maintenance
limit, would add approximately _27 pounds a year_ to your weight!)

Now you are to reduce your maintenance diet--the 2200 calories we are
taking for example--to 1200 calories--quite a comfortable lot, you will
find.

You will be surprised how much 1200 calories will be if the food is
judiciously selected.

After All, Hunger Is Much More Agreeable Than Apoplexy

You may be hungry at first, but you will soon become accustomed to the
change. I find that dry lemon or orange peel, or those little aromatic
breath sweeteners, just a tiny bit, seem to stop the hunger pangs; or
you may have a cup of fat-free bouillon or half an apple, or other low
calorie food. (Count the calories here.)

One thousand calories less food per day equals four ounces of fat lost
daily--approximately 8 pounds per month. If you do not want to lose so
fast, do not cut down so much.

Fourth Order

You Register Joy

You may eat just what you like--candy, pie, cake, fat meat, butter,
cream--but--_count your calories!_ You can't have many nor large
helpings, you see; but isn't it comforting to know that you can eat
these things? Maybe some meal you would rather have a 350-calorie piece
of luscious pie, with a delicious 150-calorie tablespoonful of whipped
cream on it, than all the succulent vegetables Luther Burbank could
grow in California.

My idea of heaven is a place with me and mine on a cloud of whipped
cream.

You Registered Too High

Now that you know you can have the things you like, proceed to make your
menus containing very little of them.

Fifth Order

This is going to be your chief business and pursuit in life for the next
few months, this reducing of your weight. However, keep up your Red
Cross and all other activities, fast and furiously, so that you won't be
thinking about yourself.

More Warnings

Don't reduce more than two or three pounds a week; two or less is
better. If you are too cannibalistic, your heart, kidneys and nervous
system are liable to suffer--you yourself are supplying too much fat in
your dietary, and there are other scientific reasons against reducing
too rapidly.

However, you may find that the first week or so you may reduce five or
seven pounds; but don't worry about this, for that is a slushy, watery
fat that goes easily.

If a claim like a cold should attack you, and after spraying nose and
throat frequently with an antiseptic, and then denying the claim
vigorously, it persists in running a severe course, better go back to
maintenance diet for a few days.

Not Even While Cooking

Don't "taste"! You will find the second taste much harder to resist
than the first. If you have allowed in your daily program something
between meals (a good plan), take it, but not otherwise.

Try not to overeat at any time, and thus undo the work that perhaps has
taken you two or three days to accomplish. It will be all right
occasionally, possibly one day a week, to eat up to your maintenance
diet, but don't, I beg of you, go over it so that you will gain.

You will be tempted quite frequently, and you will have to choose
whether you will enjoy yourself hugely in the twenty minutes or so that
you will be consuming the excess calories, or whether you will dislike
yourself cordially for the two or three days you lose by your lack of
will power.

I Ought Not to Do This

I am afraid I am going to tell a story. I feel as though I were, and I
don't want to. It is one I heard years ago at a teachers' convention at
Riverside, when I was a tender, unsuspecting young school teacher, so
it is perfectly good, albeit senile--and it illustrates my point so
well--so well--well, you have to put yourself in the place of the little
chaps, Billie and Johnnie, of the kindergarten.

A Little Anatomical Story

It seems it was customary to bring a lunch, and Little-new-boy had come
without one. Teacher asked Billie would he share? No, sturdily; not he.
But little Johnnie, he would. Some time later, Johnnie, with a frantic
waving of his hand, and with just pride in his generosity, informed the
class that he had shared his lunch with Little-new-boy and he felt good
is his little heart.

Billie stood his ground and stoutly declared that he ate his and he felt
good in his little belly.

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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 and reduce, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto