However, exercise is a very important feature of any reducing program; not because of the fat that is burned up in the exercise—and there is some burned—but for the reason that it is necessary to keep one in a healthy condition. The muscles, the internal organs, the bones, the brain, are all benefited—in fact, the entire system.
The exercises described hereinafter will help make you fat or thin, and they will keep you supple, graceful, and light on your feet, so that when I tell my husband that he must dance with you, Madam, he will not say, "Nothing stirring," and when you, Professor, ask me to dance, I will not curse the day I was born.
If you have not been accustomed to exercise, I warn you to take up only one or two at a time and do each one a few times only. You will be atrociously sore, and you will realize that you have muscles of which you wotted not.
However, persist, if you are sure there are no organic reasons why you shouldn't—such as a weak heart. (In case you are very much overweight, I think it advisable to wait until you have reduced somewhat.)
It is splendid if you can belong to a gymnasium or to a physical culture class, but ten to fifteen minutes' systematic daily exercise practiced with vim, and each set followed by deep breathing, will do more good than a gymnasium spasmodically attended. Brisk walking with a long stride isn't so bad; in fact, if taken with a very long stride it will twist 'most every organ you have in your body.
There are hundreds of exercises you can take. If you will notice little rascal's illustrations you will find many good ones. Those illustrating the beginning of this chapter are excellent.
If possible, it is best to take the exercises on arising in the morning, but if you have a household to care for you may not be able to do so. For those who have to do their own work, it may be well to do the work first. You can do it in half the time if you plan it carefully and speed up. (This advice is not for my thin friends; their speedometers register too high already.) It does not matter so much when the exercises are done as that they are done, and done every day for the rest of your life, with the possible exception of two or three days a month.
Gallstones, permanent stiff joints, and other little things like that will have a hard time forming.
My Exercises
(The services of my noted artist I was able to obtain with great difficulty, as he was engaged in the more important work of making a swagger stick. I finally secured him by the promise of an ice cream cone and twenty-three cents to go with his two cents so that he could buy a Thrift Stamp. He is given due credit on the title page.)
These exercises executed with vim, vigor, and vip—deep breathing between each set—will take ten to fifteen minutes. Re-read my warning.
1. Feet together, arms outstretched, palms up, describe as large a circle as possible. Fine for round shoulders and fat backs. Do slowly and stretch fifteen times. Smile.
2. Arms outstretched, swing to right and to left as far as possible at least 15 times each.
3. Bend sideways, to right and left, alternately, as far as possible at least 15 times each.
4. Revolve the body upon the hips from right to left at least 10 times, and left to right the same.
5. Bend and touch the floor with your fingers, without bending your knees, at least 15 times.
6. Knee-bending exercise, at least 15 times. This is hard at first.
7. Hand on door or wall, swing each leg back and forth at least 15 times. To the side 15 times. Turn head, raise arm, and tense both.
8. Step on chair with each foot at least 10 times. This is good for calf and thigh muscles. After a while you won't look as though you needed a derrick to get onto a street car.
9. Arms on sides of chair. Come down and touch abdomen. Fine for back and abdomen. Fifteen times.
10. Brush hair vigorously at least 200 double strokes all over the head, N.S.E.W., using a brush in each hand.
(Military brushes are best. If you can't purloin a set of your husband's, two ordinary brushes will do.) Now shake out the loose dandruff. This is one of the best exercises and must not be omitted, for it accomplishes two purposes. It is a good arm and chest exercise, and it gives a healthy scalp absolutely free from the dammdruff.
This for a few minutes, followed by this, the hot preferably at night.
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.
Will power, being feeble to a greater or less degree, must be bolstered and aided a bit, to begin with, so—
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 | |||||||
| Members' Names | Normal Weight |
Weight on | |||||
| Date | Date | Date | Date | Date | Date | ||
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.)
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—
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now that you know you can have the things you like, proceed to make your menus containing very little of them.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
| 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. |
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.
| 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.
| 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. |
| 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.
If there is one thing more important than another, it is thorough mastication.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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?
All the characters in my book are friends of mine. Perhaps you had better substitute were for are. There was one woman mentioned in my original manuscript and my husband said what have you put her in for Pattie? (a corruption of Pettie, a H.moon hangover) she is no friend of yours: she knocks you. And I said loftily like, I want you to know Ijit (corruption of Idiot, also a H.moon hangover) I am above personalities she is prominent and besides she is fat especially in the feet and head and she doesn't know it and he said that doesn't make any difference you do not have to immortalize her and I said I would look up the authorities on the subject and he said he was authority enough and I said I would see what the other authorities said anyway and I did and I found one most eminent that said you should love your enemies but none that said you should immortalize them so I said I'd drop her and he said he should say so and so I did.
—All the characters in my book are friends of mine. Perhaps you had better substitute were for are.
THE HEAVY circle represents the amount of daily food (number of calories) which will maintain you at present weight. It may be your weight is too much or too little, but this is your maintenance diet for that weight.
THE SECOND circle represents a daily diet containing more than necessary for maintenance; for example, let us say 1000 calories more. This 1000 calories of food is equivalent to approximately 4 ounces of fat [1000÷255 (1 oz. fat = 255 C.)]; 4 ounces of fat daily equals 8 pounds a month which will be added to your weight, and, if not needed by the system, will deposit itself as excess fat.
Or the toxins arising from the unnecessary food will irritate the blood vessels, causing arterio-sclerosis (hardening of the arteries), which in turn may cause kidney disease, heart disease, or apoplexy (rupture of artery in the brain), and maybe death before your time.
On the other hand, if you are underweight and the added nourishment is gradually worked up to, it will improve the health and cause a gain of so much (theoretically, and in reality if kept up long enough).
THE THIRD circle represents a diet containing less than the maintenance; again, for example, say 1000 calories less. Here the 1000 calories must be taken from the body tissue, and fat is the first to go, for fat is virtually dead tissue.
This 4 ounces of fat daily which will be supplied by your body equals in six months 48 pounds.
There are in America hundreds of thousands of overweight individuals; not all so much overweight as this, but some considerably more so. If these individuals will save 1000 calories of food daily by using their stored fat, think what it would mean at this time.
Not only an immense saving of food to be sent to our soldiers and allies and the starving civilians, and of money which could be used for Liberty Bonds, the Red Cross, and other war relief work, but a great saving and a great increase in power; for there is no doubt that by reducing as slowly and scientifically as I have directed, efficiency and health will be increased one hundred fold.
If, as illustrated in the third circle, the 1000 calories or less is eaten and the individual already is underweight, with no excess fat, then this amount will be taken from the muscles and the more vital tissues, and the organism will finally succumb. Before this time is reached there will be a great lowering of resistance, and the individual will be a prey to the infectious diseases.
It must be remembered that in children the growth of the whole body is tremendously active, and especially that of the heart and nervous system.
If the nervous system is undernourished, it becomes disorganized and undeveloped. This is apt to be expressed in uncertain emotional states, quick tempers, and a predisposition to convulsions. The heart, if undernourished, lays its foundation for future heart disease, and the whole system will be injured for life.
Anything that impairs the vigor and vitality of children strikes at the basis of national welfare.
You can see from this how extremely important it is that, in our need for the conservation of food, only those who can deny themselves and at the same time improve their health and efficiently should do it. It will be no help in our crisis if the health and resistance of our people be lowered and the growth and development of our children be stunted.
We, the hundreds of thousands of overweight citizens, combined with the hundreds of thousands of the normal who are overeating to their ill, can save all the food that is necessary. We are anxious, willing, eager to do this. Now we know how, and we will.
Food Will Win the War
WATCH OUR WEIGHT!
February, 1, 1921
An Added Chapter in Which Are Offered Twenty-one Suggestive Menus
After nearly two years with the American Red Cross in the Balkans I return to find the little book has been carrying on in my absence—I write this for the fifth edition—and my publishers insisting that I must furnish some more menus. They affirm that there are many who do not care to or cannot figure out their own.
After being so long under military discipline I obey now instinctively, although I do not want to do this. But you know publishers. They say that if there are menus for those who do not have the desire to compute them, the usefulness of the book will be increased. Publishers are so altruistic.
Now far be it from me to scorn the possibility of increased sales myself. So I comply, and after you are reduced you will have the energy and the increased keenness to scout around in the calories and make out your own.
A little of my Balkan experience in the reducing line may not be amiss. In Albania, where I was stationed most of the time, life is very strenuous. We all had to work hard and expend a great deal of nervous energy. Medical calls on foot in the scorching sun over unkind cobblestones, long distance calls on unkinder mules, long hours in nerve-racking clinics, ferocious man-eating mosquitos, scorpions, centipedes, sandflies, and fleas, and other unspeakable animals kept us hopping and slapping and scratching.
But there was one consolation to me. With this work, more intensive and more strenuous than I had ever done before, I would not have to diet—I would not have to watch my weight—I would not have to count my calories! Oh, joy!
We lived a community life, we Red Crossers. We had plain blunt food, American canned mostly, supplemented with the fare that could be eked out of Albania, and cooked by an Albanese who could not be taught that we Americans were not Esquimos and did not like food swimming in fat. However, it tasted good to famished Red Crossers, and I ate three meals a day, confident that I would retain my girlish middle-aged slenderness and not have to diet. We had no scales and no mirrors larger than our hand mirrors. Our uniforms were big and comfortable.
The French who are in charge of Scutari depart, the officers leaving to us some of their furniture, including a full length French plate mirror. Ordinarily when I look in a full-length mirror I don't hate myself so much—so it is with some degree of anticipated pleasure that I complacently approach, to get a life-size reflection of myself after many months of deprivation of that pleasure.
"Mon Dieu!" I exclaim. "Bogomi!" (Serbian—'For the love of Allah!') "This is no mirror," I mutter. "This is one of those musee things that make you look like a Tony Sarg picture of Irvin Cobb."
"What's irritating you, Dockie?" asks one of the girls, coming up and standing back of me. I look at her reflection. She does not look like Irvin Cobb!
"Peggy," I say tragically, "Peggy, do I look like my reflection?"
"Yes, dear, we have all noticed how stout you have been getting. Aren't you supposed to be some shark on the subject of ideal weight?"
And the bitter truth is borne in upon me—no matter how hard I work—no matter how much I exercise, no matter what I suffer, I will always have to watch my weight, I will always have to count my calories.
This is what I did then:
I stopped going to the breakfast table. I kept some canned milk and coffee in my room, and made me two cups of coffee. For lunch I ate practically what I wanted, limiting myself to one slice of bread or one potato (we had no butter), with fruit for dessert. For dinner I came down only when the dessert was being served, and had a share of that with some coffee. I was jeered and derided. You know how in community life we all are as disagreeable as we like, and still love each other. Did not I know the desserts were the most fattening part of the meal? I was some authority on how to reduce, I was!
In vain I told them that it did not matter so long as my total caloric intake did not equal the number that I needed. It was not until some months after, when they saw that I was normal weight again, that they began to realize I knew whereof I spoke.
Then came our withdrawal from Albania and release from duty. After months of canned goods came Paris with its famous dishes; Crème d'Isigny avec crème! Artichauts an beurre! Patisseries francaises! Oo lala! Again I said calories be dashed! I can reduce when I get home. I had no delusions now, you see.
And now I am home trying to help raise the funds for the starving children of Central Europe, and explaining to my friends that while there is a food shortage in Europe it is not because I was there; and that I am reducing and the money that I can save will help keep a child from starving, and that they can do the same; that for every pang of hunger we feel we can have a double joy, that of knowing we are saving worse pangs in some little children, and that of knowing that for every pang we feel we lose a pound. A pang's a pound the world around we'll say.
Every once in a while you hear that the caloric theory has been exploded. There is no caloric "theory." Therefore none to explode. Calories are simply units for measuring heat and energy and never will be exploded any more than the yard or meter "theory" will be exploded. Foods must contain essential salts and the growth and health maintaining elements. These cannot be measured by calories. The quantity of heat or energy production but not the quality of the foods is measured in calories, and one must have a knowledge of the qualities also. No scientifically educated individual has ever thought otherwise.
The chief objection to following the advice of the numerous laymen who write eat-and-grow-thin menus is that they advise the elimination of all fats, sugars and starches. They lose sight of the fact, or they do not know, that the obese individual—I dislike that term —will have to have a balanced diet even while reducing if he is to maintain his health. One will lose weight on these menus, but as very many can testify they lose their health also. One cannot live on an unbalanced diet for any length of time without becoming unbalanced also. And furthermore the over-weighter will always have to diet more or less, and will have to have menus which he can continue to use. After normal weight is reached he will not have to be nearly so abstemious, but the same dietetic errors which produced overweight in the first place will produce it again. So he must know something of dietetics and he must have a balanced diet.
Now I shall make out some balanced menus, 1200 C's a day, being careful to include a large amount of the leafy vegetables and some milk or its products, the foods that McCollom calls PROTECTIVE FOODS because they contain in a large measure the essential mineral salts, and those vital elements he has called "Fat soluble A" and "Water soluble B"—others call vitamines—which he has proved to be so vital and necessary for growth in the young and the maintenance of health in the adult. I shall also include 200-300 C's of protein.
The leafy vegetables, cabbage, cauliflower, celery tops, lettuce, onion, Swiss chard, turnip tops, and other leaves employed as greens, water cress, etc., not only contain these vital elements, but they also exert a favourable influence on sluggish bowels and kidneys. They are low in caloric value, hence are low in fat-producing properties, and can be consumed with indiscretion, properly masticated.
It is better while you are reducing to stay away from the dining table when you do not expect to eat. If you are rooming, get a tiny sterno outfit, some substitute or coffee, some canned or dry milk, some sugar if you use it, and you can make a hot drink in your room and be independent for your breakfast and your evening meal, when you decide some day to go without that. Do not take more than 100 calories for your breakfast. That leaves you 1100 calories to be divided during the day if you go on a 1200 calorie schedule. I suggest the following distribution of the calories: