Chapter 4

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| +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | +------------------+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+

[Sidenote: _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.)

[Sidenote: _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--

[Sidenote: _Good-night!_]

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_

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _Shrink Your Stomach_]

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.

[Sidenote: _Shrink Your Stomach_]

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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _Mono-Diets_]

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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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_

[Sidenote: _You Are Down to Business_]

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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_

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

9

Autobiographical

I did not give our thin friends a sample menu for fear it would upset them; but nothing can upset your digestion, I know. However, I will not give you a sample menu, either, but will tell you what I eat when I go on a reduction regime, which for me is 1200 Calories.

You will notice, most of my calories I have at dinner in the evening. You may not like this, but would rather have yours spread over the entire day; and you can suit your fancy, for it makes no difference as long as your total number per day stays within your reduction limit.

[Sidenote: _Make Out Several Menus if You Like_]

Don't think you have to follow my menu. You might gain on it! Study the Key and select your own.

Many will lose by going on the no-breakfast plan, or the no-lunch plan. If they do reduce, it is because they have lowered their daily consumption of food, and not because of the no-breakfast or no-lunch plan _per se._

Fat seems to melt faster when the chief meal is in the middle of the day, and with only 200 or 300 calories of fruit for the evening meal. In this way you slim while you sleep.

MY BREAKFAST

1 slice very dry coarse bread toast 1/4 in. thick 50 C. Butter, 1/4 cu. in 25 C. Hot water flavored with coffee 00 C. ----- Total 75 C.

[Sidenote: _Slim While You Sleep! Clever?_]

You may prefer many more calories for breakfast, or none at all. This may not look good to you, but it means an awful lot in my young life, after my exercise and bath, to sit down to my little breakfast and read the papers.

Recently I have found that two cups of moderately hot water with the juice of a lemon answers just as well as the toast and watery coffee, and is probably better. You might like some fruit.

MY LUNCHEON

1 corn muffin--I am patriotic 125 C. 1 pat butter 100 C. 1 cup coffee with 1 tbsp. cream 50 C. ------ Total 275 C.

If you are patriotic and constipated, substitute one bran muffin. You can see that this is in reality a further extension of my sumptuous breakfast. If I get tired of this, I add a salad of

Lettuce, large amount, practically 00 C. Roquefort cheese dressing 100 C.

I am very fond of this Roquefort cheese dressing; 1-1/8in. cube of cheese in a little vinegar, no oil, keeps it within the hundred calories.

You might prefer a baked apple or two tomatoes, or a dish of prunes, or 3 oz. of cottage cheese. The chief thing is to take what you like, not what I like. Count your calories.

MY DINNER

[Sidenote: _I Don't Mean Your Husband's Dessert, I Mean My Husband's. My Word! I Got Out of That Quick!_]

Vegetable soup, or bouillon, no fat; or small oyster cocktail 25 C. Lean meat, or "unthinking" lobster or fish, 5 or 6 oz 300 C. Large serving of uncooked lettuce or cabbage, practically 00 C. Mayonnaise or oil, 1/2 dsp 50 C. 1 large dish tomatoes, or cauliflower, or string beans, or carrots, or turnips (I hate turnips--just put them down so you can see you can have them if you like) 25 C. 1 medium slice bread, or 1 medium potato 100 C. 1 pat butter 100 C. 100 calories of your husband's dessert 100 C. Water 00 C. 1 cup cereal coffee, clear, practically 00 C. -------- Total 700 C.

SUMMARY

Breakfast 75 C. Luncheon including salad 375 C. Dinner 700 C. ------- 1150 C.

That leaves me 50 more calories to total 1200, to take before retiring if I am hungry. You should leave this 50 calories to take before retiring, because if you are hungry you will find it very difficult to go to sleep.

A small cup of hot skimmed milk tends to be a sedative. Hunger, like cold feet, is hard to go to sleep on.

[Sidenote: _For Both Sexes_]

_If there is one thing more important than another, it is thorough mastication._

[Sidenote: _Sometimes I Take More Than 100 Calories of My Husband's Dessert. I Love Fat Men, But I Don't Want to Be Married to 'Em_]

This applies to the thin as well as to the fat, and to the child as well as to the adult. Take a moderate mouthful and rassel with it until it is automatically swallowed. Chew until it is all gone before you put any more in your mouth. There is no better way of jollying yourself into thinking that you have had all you want than this Fletcherizing habit, and it takes the same time to consume one-half the amount of food you have been in the habit of eating.

I will allow you all the water you want, in reason; in fact, I advise it while you are reducing, both at the meals and between meals. The only precaution is that at the meals it should not be drunk while food is in the mouth, for this would tend to lessen thorough mastication.

Now, Madam and Madam's husband, when are you going to begin this important business of reducing? After the holidays? Tomorrow? _No! Right now._ The sooner you get started, the better. The chief thing to do, and the hardest, is to get started and to get the habit. After the first three days you will not dread it; in fact; you will feel so much better that you will not be willing to go back to your old habits of overeating.

Now let's review a bit what you are to do.

[Sidenote: _Plan the Day Before_]

First: Pledge yourself to yourself, and to someone else, so you will be ashamed to fail. There is a great deal of psychology to reducing. Use strong auto-suggestion. Decide just how much you are going to eat in advance of the meal--so many calories, _no more!_ This sounds foolish, but it helps wonderfully.

Second: Begin with a fast or a low caloric diet for the first day; keep it, if necessary, one day weekly.

[Sidenote: _Low Bridge on Fats and Pastries_]

Third: Study food list and make out menus the caloric totals of which _are less_ than your maintenance diet. Have a fairly balanced diet, some fat, some carbohydrates, some protein, and a good amount of green vegetables and fruit. _Have 200-300 C's of protein._

Fourth: Masticate every morsel with such thoroughness that it is automatically swallowed.

Fifth: Keep up your activities--Red Cross and other relief work.

Sixth: Remember that you will feel good in your little heart when you resist temptation to overeat, and when you don't, you won't feel good anywhere.

Seventh: Some vigorous exercise every day.

[Sidenote: _There Is Life Substance and Intelligence in Chocolate Creams!_]

NOTE: If there comes a time when you think you will die unless you have some chocolate creams, go on a c.c. debauch. I do, occasionally, and will eat as many as ten or so; but I take them before dinner, then me for the balance of my dinner--

1 bowl of clear soup 25 C. 1 cracker 25 C. ------ Total 50 C.

And thus, you see, every supposed pleasure in sin (eating) will furnish more than its equivalent of pain (dieting) until belief in material life (chocolate creams) is destroyed.

_Review_

1. Describe your stomach.

2. If there is one thing more important than another, what is it?

3. Repeat the five orders in chapter 8.

4. Repeat the warnings.

5. Work the following example:

X gains 25 pounds during the year. How many calories has he averaged daily over his maintenance diet?

KEY:

25 lbs. fat = 400 oz. fat. 1 oz. fat represents 275 C. food consumed. 400 oz. = 400 x 275, or 110,000 C. 110,000 / 365 = 301 C. _Answer_. X has eaten 301 C. per day more than necessary.

6. How many calories have you averaged daily over your maintenance diet? And what could you have left off your menu and kept from gaining all that weight?

10

Testimonials

[Sidenote: _From the Field_]

After you have reduced or gained, let me share your joys. Write me a little note. You need not sign your name if you don't want to. I anticipate the following:

DEAR DOCTOR:

I am so grateful to you, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, for what you have done for me. After reading your book, "Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories" my chronic case of meanness--I mean leanness--was absolutely cured. My weight, which was ... now is ... and I am on my way to normal. I am fond of you.

* * * * *

DEAREST DOCTOR:

I cannot be too grateful to you, dear Doctor Lulu Hunt Peters, for your book "Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories," for I have lost ... pounds! My weight was ... and now is ... and I am on my way to normal.

I should be ungrateful indeed if I did not mention that while reading the book a chronic case of dammdruff which I had had for years, and which had been given up by six specialists, was absolutely cured. I adore you!

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _A Wonderful Demonstration_]

DEAR DOCTOR:

For your book, "Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories," words are inadequate to express my thanks. For I have been delivered from a chronic affliction of many years' duration, for which I had tried all known methods of cure. I refer to the smoking of cheap cigars by my husband. He suddenly found he had no desire for the noxious weed! Your arm and leg exercises are wonderful.

* * * * *

11

An Apology and Some Amendments

On re-reading this literary gem, humorous classic, and scientific treatise on weight reduction and gaining, I see that I have a very intimate mixture of the thins and the fats. But that is as it should be for balance. I had intended to keep you strictly separate, but the preaching, the exercises, the dry definitions, the Key to the Calories, and so forth, was matter that was applicable to both, so it could not be done.

[Sidenote: _Watch Your Weight_]

I have just got to bring this to a close now, if I have it ready as I promised, for the lecture, "Watch Your Weight!" I am glad of it, too. I am getting so ... funny it is painful. I will close with the next chapter. It will be beautifully scientific, but not funny, I promise.

_Some Amendments_

[Sidenote: _No. 1_]

You perhaps have noticed that my first chapter is called "Preliminary Bout," and then I have gone on to describe a club meeting. I am aware that P.B. is a prize fighting term, and I meant it for the picture of me fighting myself, not for the club meeting. I have attended many club meetings, and in none of them have I ever seen any fighting that would have taken any prize anywhere, although I will say I have seen and have myself personally conducted some very classy stuff.

[Sidenote: _No. 2_]

I do not use slang. I use only the purest, most refined, and cultured English. I leave slang to those who can get by with it and put it over. So where I have used dashes you may use your favorite slang words. Mine were deleted by the censors.

[Sidenote: _No. 3 (a)_]

Mrs. Ima Gobbler is not really fat enough to be called a fat--! She is only 40 or 50 pounds overweight, but she is fond of me and I took liberties with her. She is a darling.

[Sidenote: _No. 3 (b)_]

She is a purist, too. I called her up after I put her in my book, and I said, "You are fond of me, aren't you, Mrs. Gobbler?" And she said, "Youbetcha." "And you are a good sport, aren't you?" "Surest thing you know!" "That's good, for I have said a horrid thing to you. I had to, in order to stop the club discussion." And she responded soulfully, "Go to it, Kid!"

[Sidenote: _No. 4_]

Mrs. Sheesasite's husband did not really have to buy her a pair of freight scales; that is just a gentle josh. The ordinary scales will weigh 300 pounds, I believe. She is also a dear.

[Sidenote: _No. 5_]

My husband's eyes are not really green, nor is he cross-eyed. They are the loveliest, softest brown. The green eyes belong on the maternal side of this house.

[Sidenote: _No. 6_]

My artist is not really noted. He is just an ordinary adorable ten-year-old boy kiddie. Aren't his little figures the dearest ever?