The turning point: When does weight gain become a life-shortening menace?

“ Loss of flesh has also a collateral value of great import, because it is almost an invariable rule that rapid thinning is accompanied soon or late with more or less anæmia, and it is uncommon to see a person steadily gaining fat after any pathological reduction of weight without a corresponding gain in amount and quality of blood. We too rarely reflect that the blood thins with the decrease of the tissues and enriches as they increase. ”

“ Looking back over the whole subject, it will be well for the physician to remember that increase of fat, to be a wholesome condition, should be accompanied by gain in quantity and quality of blood, and that while increase of flesh after illness is desirable, and a good test of successful recovery, it should always go along with improvement in color. Obesity with thin blood is one of the most unmanageable conditions I know of. ”

“ Just as there are bad habits of eating too little that are dangerous and must be corrected by the will so there are bad habits of eating too much that can only be corrected in the same way. While it is dangerous to be under weight in the early years of life, it is at least as dangerous to be overweight in middle life. ”

“ Then it is necessary to reduce the food intake until digestion and assimilation catch up with supply. Then if the eating is right the individual goes to the proper weight and retains it.
The slender people are in the safest physical condition. The vast amount of statistics gathered by the life insurance companies bears this out. Remember that fat is a low grade tissue, which sometimes crowds out high grade tissue, that an excess indicates degeneration and that obesity is a disease. All fat people eat too much, even though they consider themselves small eaters. ”

“ Even then, the overweight patient who is under a physician’s treatment for glandular disorders is able to lose weight when his food intake is regulated.
What many people do not realize, however, is that the body’s energy requirements usually change after age 30 or 40. As a person gets older, metabolism slows down, and fewer calories are needed to maintain weight. The trouble is that eating habits usually stay exactly the same, while physical activity often decreases. ”

“ The lowest mortality is found among those who average, as a group, a few pounds over the average weight before age 35, and a few pounds under the average weight after age 35. That is, after the age of 35, overweight is associated with an increasingly high death rate, and at middle life it becomes a real menace to health, either by reason of its mere presence as a physical handicap or because of the faulty living habits that are often responsible for its development. ”

“ How many people after age 35 have a conformation of body that is in accord with proper ideals of health and symmetry? The average individual, as age progresses, gains weight until he reaches old age, when the weight usually decreases.
This movement of weight is so universal that it has been accepted as normal, or physiological, whereas it is not normal, and is the result of disease-producing and life-shortening influences. ”

“ When the male and female have assumed their complete development they weigh almost exactly 20 times as much as at birth, while the stature is about 3-1/2 times greater. Children lose weight during the first three days after birth; at the age of a week they sensibly increase ”

“ Health in manhood and womanhood depends on how the health is cared for in childhood. The foundation for disease is often laid during school years. The making of strong bodies that will live joyous lives for long years must begin in boyhood and girlhood.
In youth is the time to begin right living. Bad habits formed in early life often cause much sorrow in later years. It is said that over one half the drunkards began drinking liquor before they were twenty years of age and most of the smokers began to use tobacco before they were twenty years old. ”

“ The gain in weight is four pounds yearly from the age of three to that of seven years, then five, then six, and then about nine pounds. It sometimes happens that at about the age of nine in girls and eleven in boys there is almost a cessation of growth for a short time. ”

“ Thus the annual increase in the weight of the body which until the period of puberty was only from three to three and a half pounds, suddenly rises to five and six pounds when this period commences, and gets to be twelve pounds when it is at the summum of intensity. And it is worthy of remark that in females who arrive at the age of puberty about two years earlier than males, this increase of growth also commences two years sooner. ”

“ Whether fat people possess greater power of resistance as against the fatal wasting of certain maladies or not, does not seem to be known, and I fancy that the popular medical belief is rather opposed to a belief in the vital endurance of those who are unusually fat.
That I am not pushing too far this idea of the indicative value of gain of weight may be further seen in persons who suffer from some incurable chronic malady, but who are in other respects well. The relief from their disease, even if temporary, is apt to be signalled by abrupt gain in weight. ”

“ It must also be remembered that a simple gain in weight is not sufficient evidence of a child’s normality; a freedom from gastro-intestinal disturbances, and a resistance to disease, are equally essential. ”

“ Not only should the treatment of obesity begin early in a particular case, but, in families where there is a recognized tendency to take on fat, it should begin early in life.
Children should not be so fed that they become mere specimens, illustrative of how early fat accumulation may occur, and to what a degree it may go. Just as soon as baby shows signs of an accumulation of fat above its normal weight for age and size, there should be just such a regulation of its diet as would be considered necessary if it were an older person, and showed the same unfortunate tendency. ”

“ Very many of the wisest physicians do believe that of those who overlive their childhood, there is scarce one of twenty, [Pg 312] yea, or of a hundred that dieth, but gluttony or excess in eating or drinking is a principal cause of their death, though not the most immediate cause. It is thought to kill a hundred to one of all that die at age. And it will not let them die easily and quickly, but tormenteth them first with manifold diseases while they live. You eat more than nature can perfectly concoct, and because you feel it not trouble you or make you sick, you think it hurts you not ”

“ As age advances the only organ whose weight increases with the number of years, the heart, may become hypertrophied or dilated; its coronary arteries may undergo an alteration; the pericardium thickens, and in fact arterial atheroma and degeneration generally may begin between thirty-five and forty years. ”

“ The important organs of the body are wearing out too soon—the diseases of old age are reaching down into the younger age periods.
The death rate from the degenerate diseases of the heart, blood vessels and kidneys, including apoplexy, has increased over 100 per cent. ”

“ At an equality of age the male is generally heavier than the female. Towards the age of 12 years only an individual of each sex has the same weight. The male attains the maximum weight at about the age of 40, and he begins to lose it very sensibly toward 60. At 80 he loses about 13.2328 lbs., and the stature is diminished 2.756 inches. Females attain their maximum weight at about 50. The mean weight of a mature man is 104 lbs., and of an average woman 94 lbs. In old age they lose about 12 or 14 lbs. Men weigh most at 40, women at 50, and begin to lose weight at 60. ”

“ This table shows us that man attains the maximum of weight at forty years of age. At this age then we may regard the economy as being perfect. Now when we consider that persons from twelve to eighteen years indulge most frequently in masturbation and that this habit may be formed at a very young age, we may easily conceive of the ills with which it may be attended. ”

“ With us the over-fat are chiefly to be found among the women of the well-to-do classes of the cities, and from thirty years old onward. They persecute the medical men to reduce their weight, and the vast number of advertisements of quack and proprietary remedies against obesity indicate how wide-spread the tendency must be. ”

“ At the close of this period (seventeenth year for males, fourteenth for females) , the ponderal index resumes its upward course (corresponding to the period in which the transverse dimensions of the skeleton increase, and in which the individual, as the phrase goes, fills out) , and it continues to rise well into mature life (the individual takes on flesh) ; until in old age, the ponderal index begins to fall again (the soft tissues shrink, the cartilages ossify, the whole person is shrunken and wasted.) ”

“ When old age comes in, the body is infirm, the limbs are relaxed; the face is emaciate and shrivelled; its skin is wrinkled and scantily covers the veins and sinews; the eyes discern not a far off, and the pupil gazes on vacuity: the nostrils are stuffed with hair; the trunk trembles as it moves; the bones appear beneath the surface; the back is bowed and the joints are bent; the digestive fire is extinct and there is little appetite and little vigour; walking, rising sitting, sleeping are all painful efforts; the ear is dull; the eye is dim; the mouth is disgusting with dribbling saliva ”

“ Hence, as we advance in age, the bones, the cartilages, the membranes, the flesh, and every fibre of the body, becomes more solid, more dry, and more brittle. Every part shrinks, [Pg 154] motion becomes more slow, the circulation of the fluids is performed with less freedom; perspiration diminishes; the secretions alter; the digestion becomes laborious; and the juices no longer serve to convey their accustomed nourishment. Thus the body dies by little and little, and all its functions are diminished by degrees; life is driven from one part of the frame to another; universal rigidity prevails ”

“ Age comes, the body withers, the brain grows dull, the blood becomes thin, the soul grows weary; and the power to live, as once we lived, is taken from us. We sit, white-haired, blue veined, drinking in the sun, [7] through shriveled pores, to drive the chill from our shrunken frame. ”

“ The form that so rapidly matured into one of grace, strength, and manly attributes of character, is bowed by the weight of years. The elasticity of youth gives way to the measured step and careful tread of age, and on the head time sprinkles his snow. ”

“ Thus the human embryo at birth has increased 5,000,000 per268 cent of its initial weight. Old age is merely the later result of changes that have gone on at a diminishing rate ever since the ovum from which we originated was fertilized. ”

“ At every "gate of life"--as the Orientalists have beautifully called the different ages--he is beset by peril. Temptations allure his youth, misfortunes darken the pathway of his manhood, and his old age is encumbered with infirmity and disease. But clothed in the armor of virtue he may resist the temptation; he may cast misfortunes aside, and rise triumphantly above them; but to the last, the direst, the most inexorable foe of his race, he must eventually yield; and stricken down by death, he sinks prostrate into the grave, and is buried in the rubbish of his sin and human frailty. ”

“ As we are all under the double delusion that the strength of the body and its heat come from the food, we all with one accord put far too much food into the body, and when we find that we die, all of us, generation after generation, at from 50 to 70 years of age, we make up little proverbs to justify our unphysiological conduct and say that three score years and ten are the measure of the duration of life. ”

“ Most of the evils that befall us in this world, including premature old age and early death, are, in our opinion, as we have often repeated, solely due to our own negligence; and to avoid such a fate we recommend the following precepts:—
1. To be as much as possible in the open air, and especially in the sunshine; and to take plenty of exercise, taking special care to breathe deeply and regularly.
2. To live on a diet consisting of: meat once a day, eggs, cereals, green vegetables, fruit, and raw milk of healthy cows (as much as the stomach will permit) ”

“ As man is learning more and more about his life, he is finding that sickness, premature old age, and untimely death are, in a large measure, due to his own misunderstanding of the purposes of life. It is this misunderstanding that gives the mysterious air to life. We fear the mysterious, for our ingrained habit of regarding things that we do not yet understand as insoluble mysteries is a relic of the days when savage man found mystery and danger in everything. ”

“ The psychological needs of old age are greater than ever.
In his Health, Strength, and Happiness,107 he gives an earnest, practical caution for all, but especially for the aged, to eat less; and particularly so in warm weather. “We dig our graves with our teeth.” Fat is hardly a part of the body at all. Flesh is really muscle, so that the fat man should be said to be losing flesh. ”

“ To be worth anything, a loss of weight must be permanent. Therefore, anyone who wants to benefit from a weight-reduction program must make up his mind that he is changing his eating habits for life. Going back to old patterns will only pile up the pounds all over again. Unless this fact is accepted, reducing efforts will probably be wasted.
The Body’s Need for Food
Awake or asleep, the body needs energy for every breath, every heartbeat, every activity of living. Food supplies this energy which is measured in units called calories. ”