Samuel G. Blythe

“ I do not doubt that a man who could devote his whole time to the work could, by means of some of the appliances offered—from the apparatus in a gymnasium to rubber shirts, get off fat—nor do I doubt the efficacy of exercise and its accompaniments in the way of sweating and baths and all that; but when a person has a living to make these methods are useless, not through any demerit of their own but because the man who is fat hasn't the time or opportunity and, more than all, soon fails in the inclination to use them. ”

“ Now, mark you, I am not saying diet—scientific diet—is not a good thing, a magnificent step forward in the progress of this world; but I am saying that the average fat-reducing diet is impossible to any but a man or woman of the ultimate will-power, and is a hardship that need not be endured. I have tried these diets, and I know! They may help reduce flesh, but they are not easy to follow and they do not contain things that any person wants to eat or is accustomed to eat, or will eat, to the exclusion of things that person does want to eat and will eat. ”

“ Don't drink alcohol. The variations that can be played on this simple theme by a skillful doctor are endless. When a real specialist in fat reduction gets hold of you—a real, earnest reducer—he can contrive a diet that would make a living skeleton thin—and likewise put him in his little grave. I have had diets handed to me that would starve a humming-bird, and diets that would put flesh on a bronze statue; and all to the same end—reduction. Science has been monkeying with nourishment for the past ten or fifteen years to the exclusion of many other branches of research ”

“ You can't have anything to eat that you want to eat. You torture yourself for a space and lose some flesh; then when you do go back to your normal method of eating the flesh comes galloping back—and there you are! It is the same with exercise. You can take off fat by exercise; but, once you begin, you are doomed to everlasting exercise, for the minute you stop back comes the fat—and more of it than you had before you began to reduce.
It is a tough game, anyway you play it, if you are disposed to be fat. No man living, who isn't a freak, can persist always in one diet. ”

“ See what I should lose! Life would be a dull and dreary affair—a dun, dismal proposition. I admitted that. On the other hand, however, life would not be a wheezy, sweaty, choked-heart, uncomfortable proposition. ”

“ You know all this fat is caused by an excess of food and drink, and you know it can be taken off by a reduction in those fatmakers. Are you going to stick round here so fat you are a joke, uncomfortable, miserable when it's hot, in your own way and in the way of everybody else, when, if you've got the will-power of a chickadee, you can get back to reasonable proportions and comfort merely by denying yourself things you do not need? ”

“ THE FUN OF GETTING THIN CHAPTER I FAT A fat man is a joke; and a fat woman is two jokes—one on herself and the other on her husband. Half the comedy in the world is predicated on the paunch. At that, the human race is divided into but two classes—fat people who are trying to get thin and thin people who are trying to get fat. ”

“ If you can tell me anything more ghastly than taking a system of canned exercises in the morning or at night in one's bedroom or bathroom, or elsewhere, with no other incentive than some physical gain that, when you come to sum it up, is largely fictitious in value—or comes inevitably to be thought so—I would like to have you step forward and name it. ”

“ Women want to be thinner because they will look better—and so do men. Likewise, women want to be plumper because they will look better—and so do men. This holds up to forty years. After that it doesn't make much difference whether either men or women look any better than they have been looking, so far as the great end and aim of all life is concerned. Consequently fat men and fat women after forty want to be thinner for reasons of health and comfort, or quit and resign themselves to their further years of obesity. ”

“ Also, until one is forty, if reasonably healthy, flesh is a joke, and not so much of a burden as it becomes later. I haven't a thing in the world against any or all of these methods. I have tried most of them and know most of them are bogus; but I am not trying to dissuade any person from taking off fat in any way that suits any individual fancy or the fancy of any reducer into whose hands the victim may have fallen. ”

“ It can be done, of course; and lumps of muscle can be stuck on almost any part of the body—but what's the use to the person who has to make a living? Then, too, I am speaking now of methods that can be used by men and women who are no longer young. A young man can and will do stunts in physical culture that an older man cannot do, either satisfactorily or comfortably.
So far as the medicinal or drug method of fat reduction is concerned, any fat man or woman who takes drugs to reduce flesh, or to help, deserves all that he or she will get—and that will be plenty. ”

“ You are told to cut out everything you want to eat and exist on triply toasted bread and the white meat of a chicken, or string beans and sawdust, or any other combination the sharps say will not produce fat, but will sustain life in a lingering form. They surround these diet talks and presentments with a lot of frills about proteins and calories and all that sort of guff, and make it as difficult as possible. ”

“ Fat is fat. It isn't any more fatal to be reasonably fat than to be reasonably thin, but it's a darned sight more uncomfortable. So far as being unreasonably thin or unreasonably fat is concerned, I suppose the thin person has the long end of it. ”

“ When a man goes out for a walk and walks as hard as he can or does anything else in the shape of exercise as hard as he can he is subjecting himself to just as much nerve strain as he can subject himself to in any other way. ”

“ Every person who does not like what I have to say is cheerfully advised to lump it. Any person who is as fat as I was and who wants to get thinner is at liberty to follow my method. If circumstances are similar results will be similar. ”

“ Your reformer, anyhow, is a person who wants all the rest of the world to do as he wants the rest of the world to do, not as the rest of the world wants to do. And the reason reformers get past so numerously is because our society is so constituted that we spend every one of our brief years doing what other people want us to do and tell us to do, and never do anything we ourselves want to do. Once I got seventeen pounds of books telling that the only way to cure everything was to fast. ”

“ Since I have had my clothes re-made and new ones constructed I am an object of continual comment among my friends. They all marvel at my changed appearance. They are all solicitous about my health. They do not see how a man can take off more than fifty pounds and not hurt himself. ”

“ I knew I was still twenty-five pounds too heavy and I was just getting into my stride. It is strange how men, and especially fat men, who haven't the nerve to reduce themselves, think a man must be sick if he takes off flesh. ”

“ Every person, I take it, has a normal weight; and if that person gives his body a chance, and ill health does not intervene, the body will find that normal and stay there. I take it that my normal weight, on account of my big frame and bones, is about one hundred and ninety-five pounds, at the age of forty-three. At any rate, it has stayed at a hundred and ninety-five since the first of last July, and in that time I have loafed for two months and ridden on Pullman cars for two other months, and have not taken any exercise to speak of ”

“ I don't know whether my method would take an ounce off any other person in the world, and I don't care. I only know it took more than fifty pounds off me. I am not advancing any argument, medicinal or otherwise, for my plan. I never talked to a doctor about it, and never shall. If there are fat men and fat women who are fat for the same reasons I was fat I suppose they can get thin the way I got thin. If they are fat for other reasons I suppose they cannot. I don't know about either proposition. ”

“ Inasmuch as an excess of food and drink make an excess of fat, it follows that the reduction in the amount of food will stop that fat-forming and give the body a chance to burn up the excess fat already formed. ”

“ You can get them of all sorts and all sure to do the work, ranging from an exclusive diet of beefsteak and spinach to desiccated hay and creamed alfalfa. There are monodiets, duodiets, vegetable diets, fruit diets, nut diets—all kinds of diets—each guaranteed to take off flesh if you have too much or to put it on if you have too little. ”

“ Nor can any man who has anything else on his mind be always exercising—especially after he has reached forty years of age, when there are so many better things to do and time is valuable, and the real idea of how to live has just begun to percolate. ”

“ However, they generally send out for a specialist when they are ill themselves. When you come to think of it that is but natural. Almost any man, whether professional or not, will take a chance with somebody else that he wouldn't quite go through with on himself. Besides, doctors treat comparative strangers for the most part, and the interests of science are to be conserved.
Almost any doctor can tell you how to get thin. ”

“ Instead of a hot-bread—I have the greatest hot-bread artist in the world at my house, bar none!—waffle, sausage, kidney-stew, lamb-chop, fried-egg and so forth sort of breakfast, I cut that meal down to some fruit, a couple of pieces of dry, hard toast, two boiled eggs and coffee. ”

“ I wasn't so strong on sweets and pastry, because I usually drank a few highballs during the day, and highballs and cocktails and sweets do not go well together—that is, the man who takes alcohol into his system usually does not care for sweets. ”

“ CHAPTER II THE SO-CALLED CURES Broadly speaking, the methods of fat reduction most in vogue are divided into four classes—mechanical, physical, medicinal and dietary. The first two are not worth considering by a man who has anything else to do. ”

“ When you come to examine into the actuating motives for any line of human endeavor you will find that vanity figures about ninety per cent, directly or indirectly, in the assay. The personal equation is the ruling equation. ”

“ There are certain economic phases of a campaign of this kind that should be mentioned. It is expensive. Not one item of clothing, save my hat, socks and shoes, which fitted me last January is of the slightest use to me now. ”