Lulu Hunt Peters

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since food is the only source of body substance, you must gradually train your stomach so that it can care for enough food to not only supply your bodily energy, but to leave a little excess to be stored as fat. ”

“ There is a good deal of effort expended by many semi-educated individuals to discredit the knowledge of calories, saying that it is a foolish food science, a fallacy, a fetish, and so forth.
They reason, or rather say, that because there are no calories in some of the very vital elements of foods—the vitamines and the mineral salts—therefore it is not necessary to know about them. They further argue that their grandfathers never heard of calories and they got along all right. That grandfather argument always enrages my mortal mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you are ill in mind or body, remember that it is natural to be well, and that within your body nature has stored the most wonderful forces which are always tending towards the normal, or health, if not obstructed or hindered. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a food contains much fat, you will know that it is high in food value, for fat has two and one-quarter times the caloric value that proteins and carbohydrates have. Dry foods are high in value, for they are concentrated and contain little water. Compare the quantity of two heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar, a concentrated food, and one and one-half pounds of lettuce, a watery vegetable, each having the same caloric value. A moderate sized chocolate cream is not only concentrated but has considerable fat in the chocolate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to harmful combinations; there are not many, and if your food is thoroughly masticated you need not concern yourself very much about them. However, if you find a food disagrees with you, or that certain combinations disagree, do not try to use them. Underweight individuals sometimes have to train their digestive tracts for some of the foods they need.
Coffee, tea and other mild stimulants are not harmful to the majority; but, like everything else, in excess they will cause ill health. Alcoholic drinks make the fat fatter and the thin thinner, and both more feeble mentally. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When you worry needlessly, notice how tense your muscles are. You are exercising them all of the time and using hundreds of calories of energy. You raise your blood pressure, the internal secretory glands may overact (re-read what I have said about these glands in the fat people) , and thus many more calories are used. The intestinal secretions do not flow so freely, you have indigestion and do not assimilate your food, and thus hundreds more calories are lost.
It certainly is impossible to gain unless your food is assimilated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!) ”

“ 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. ”

“ I can safely say that any up and around adult will reduce on 1200 calories, for that will not supply the basal metabolism, i.e., the body's internal activities, such as the beating of the heart, respiration, digestion, excretion, etc., and some of the body's stored fat will be called upon to supply the deficiency. How much one will reduce depends on how many calories are actually needed for the internal and the external activities. See pages 26 and 27. It is not advisable to reduce too rapidly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first thing many of you have to do is to learn to accept the trivial annoyances and small misfits of life as a matter of course, for to give them attention beyond their deserts is to wear the web of your life to the warp. ”

“ 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
Slim While You Sleep! ”

“ The stomach is a muscular organ and can be trained and exercised somewhat as other organs can. You will not have much appetite at first, but it will develop. Sometimes a short fast for a day or two, drinking nothing but pure water, seems to be beneficial in the beginning.
Do not drink much with your meals, unless the drink has food value by the addition of lots of cream or sugar, or both. ”

“ CONSTIPATION is many times caused by a too concentrated diet, or one containing too little roughage. It has also been discovered that some individuals who are troubled with faulty elimination digest this cellulose, and only the more resistant, like bran, is not absorbed. For those, the Japanese seaweed called agaragar in the laboratory, but more familiarly known as agar by the layman, is excellent. The most industrious digestive tract apparently can not digest that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nature sometimes needs help to stimulate those forces, or to reinforce them, or to remove obstructions. This is where the physician comes in. But you yourself can aid nature the most by realizing that nature is health and it is normal to be well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most of the harmful products are destroyed by the intestines and liver.
Fourth: True, but see that you get good meat, and don't eat it in excess.
Fifth: Unanswerable—to be proved later by personal experiments.
In addition, they say that animal protein is more easily digested, that 97 per cent is assimilated because it is animal, and so it is much more to be desired, especially by children and convalescents; that vegetable protein is enclosed in cellulose, and only 65 to 75 per cent is used by the system; thus the diet is apt to be too bulky if the proper amount is taken. ”