Fattening

“ There is nothing so nutritious, so eminently and in every way adapted for the purpose of fattening, as are the various kinds of grain—nothing that tends more to create firmness as well as delicacy in the flesh. ”

“ The10 men, of small stature, are lithe, sinewy, and extremely active; the women have a decided tendency to become fat; one or two of them had attained to such a state of obesity, that walking was next to an impossibility. The children are the most singular little frights imaginable; guiltless of garments, they seemed all eyes and stomach, arms and legs being merely trifling unessential appendages; a singularity of form that may, I presume, be traced to the habit of consuming such vast quantities of innutritious vegetable food. ”

“ But the fat man gets this philosophy from the same source that gives him most of his other traits—his predominating system.
Digestion and Contentment
¶ The eating of delicious food is one of the most intense and poignant pleasures of life. The digestion of food, when one possesses the splendid machinery for it which characterizes the Alimentive, gives a deep feeling of serenity and contentment.
Since the fat man is always just going to a big meal or in the process of digesting one he does not give himself a chance to become ill natured. His own and the world's troubles sit lightly upon him. ”

“ This time, instead of skirmishing valiantly for a space and then being ignominiously and fatly routed by the powerful forces of food and drink, I hung stolidly to the line of my original attack, harassed the enemy by a constant and deadly fire—and one morning discovered I had the foe on the run.
It always makes me laugh to hear people talk about losing flesh—unless, of course, the decrease in weight is due to illness. No healthy person, predisposed to fat, ever lost any flesh. If that person gets rid of any weight, or girth, or fat, it isn't lost—it is fought off, beaten off. ”

“ Now you are to abolish your breakfast, and not to presume to eat again without keen hunger; this hunger you may have if you wait for it, even while sitting in an arm chair, or lying in bed, and it will be for food as nourishing as the axman requires. What shall be eaten at each meal will be a law for self to determine. No food is good or healthful, and therefore typical, without a special demand for it. Keen hunger, the most relishing of foods, thoroughly masticated, a recreative state of mind during digestion, these are the easily acquired conditions behind sustained health. ”

“ I have heard a physician telling his patient—whose complaint was merely gluttony and want of exercise—that 'the earliest symptom of hyper-nutrition is a deposition of adipose tissue,' and no doubt the fine long words greatly consoled the poor man under his increasing load of fat. ”

“ The blood thus courses with greater celerity through the body, and sooner loses its nourishing properties. Then the stomach issues its mandate of hunger, and a new supply of food must be furnished. Thus it appears, as a general rule, that the quantity of food, actually needed by the body, depends on the amount of muscular exercise taken. A laboring man, in the open fields, probably throws off from his skin ten times the amount of perspirable matter, which is evolved from the skin of a person of sedentary pursuits. In consequence of this, he demands a far greater amount of food and drink. ”

“ Every thought requires a small amount of food. If we worry, the leak of nervous energy is tremendous, but at the same time we put ourselves in position where we are unable to replenish our stock, for worry ruins digestion. All this expenditure of energy and loss of heat must be made up for by the food intake. Only a small amount of surplus food can be stored in the body. Some fat can be stored as fat. Some starch and sugar can be put aside as either glycogen—animal sugar—or be changed into fat. This storing of excess food is very limited, except in cases of obesity, which is a disease. ”

“ Then the same process of overfeeding recommences with renewed appetite and sensations of invigorated digestion, until in two or three, or five or six weeks, according to the ratio existing between the amount of food ingested and the habit of expending or eliminating it from the body, the recurring attack appears and again clears the system, and so on during several years of life. If the individual takes abundant exercise and expends much energy in the business of life, a large quantity of food can be properly disposed of. ”

“ Comparison of Food Intake and Energy Output.—Many fat people who claim to be small eaters in reality constantly consume more food than their age, weight, or mode of living would necessitate. If such patients could be prevailed upon to keep a correct chart of their daily intake of food and the amount of exercise taken, they would be astounded to find how much greater was the intake in comparison to the output of energy, in other words, how much more food they ate than they required to keep them in health. ”

“ Thus, if the diet be deficient in the bone-earths, the bones—as they do in badly-nourished children—become soft and yielding; if the diet is too exclusively composed of such farinaceous articles as rice, potatoes, &c., or with too much fat, it is incapable of yielding the elements of muscular flesh, and the strength declines; if vegetable food is wanting, scurvy is the result. Here, then, we have the first element of Physical Training: the real supply of nourishment calculated to afford every material required by the body. ”

“ Obesity caused by overeating
In every case of obesity, one or more of these causes are present. If one is blessed with good digestion and good assimilation, or, in other words, if all the nutriment taken into the body is absorbed into the tissues, then the quantity must be regulated by one's work or labor, otherwise any excess of fat-producing food is stored up by provident Nature, contemplating future use; and if it is not used, by actual work, the result is a gradual accumulation of fatty tissue. ”

“ The consequences are, that hunger soon returns, and the party must either have recourse to food between the usual time of meals, or suffer the consequences of imperfect nutrition. Exercise and labour, within certain limits, promote the healthy functions of the stomach and bowels, through the action of the muscles of the abdomen increasing the peristaltic motion of these viscera. An inordinate appetite in persons leading a sedentary life is generally indicative of the food passing off imperfectly digested, or of the coats of the stomach being relaxed, or even diseased. ”

“ In towns we often observe the bad effects of over feeding in young female servants recently arrived from the country. From being accustomed to constant exercise in the open air, and to the comparatively innutritious diet on which the labouring classes subsist, they pass all at once, with appetite, digestion, and health in their fullest vigour, to the confinement of a house, to the impure atmosphere of a crowded city, and to a rich and stimulating diet. Appetite, still keen, is freely indulged ”

“ Later on, in a chapter on fasting, I shall prove to you that you carry around with you in your body sufficient reserve of food to keep you alive for eighty or ninety days; and if you draw on a small quantity of this you do not do yourself the slightest harm. Cut down the amount of your food; eat the bulky foods, which contain less calory value, and weigh yourself every day, and you will be surprised to discover how much less you need to eat than you have been accustomed to. ”

“ Thin persons need more food in proportion to their weights than fat ones. In order to lose weight, the body must be driven to consume its own fat.
To take care of the internal work of the body, breathing, heart-beating, digestion, involuntary pull of the muscles, and for the multiplied activities of the cells, each hour during the twenty-four we must have a certain number of calories as our basal requirement. ”

“ The chest must be enlarged, that the lungs may have full play, and be capable of long-continued, extra draughts upon them; and special diet and special exercise alone can accomplish these ends. All fat-producing foods are struck out, sugar and all starchy foods coming under this head, as well as all puddings, pies, cakes, and sweets in general. Our boy, after a short run, would breakfast on lean, under-done beef or mutton, dry toast, or the crust of bread, and tea without milk or sugar ”

“ It strengthens the eyesight and increases the energy of the body, improves its power of digestion and heightens its glow and complexion. Fat is deranged by such acts as, an abuse of astringent, bitter, cold, parchifying or Vistambhi (indigestible food which remains stuffed in the stomach) substances, a voluntary repression of the natural urging for evacutions of the body, by excessive sexual indulgence, and fatiguing physical exercise, or by the draining action of any particular disease. ”

“ There is no answer to these figures, which are the result of the tabulation of many hundreds of thousands of cases. The meaning of them to the fat person is to put himself on a diet of lean meat, green vegetables and fresh fruits, until he has brought himself down, not merely to the normal fatness of the civilized man, but to the normal leanness of the athlete, the soldier on campaign, and the student who has more important things to think about than stuffing his stomach. ”

“ Cases are recorded of individuals of excessive obesity, who, being subject to the authority of an absolute master, have been submitted to most rigorous treatment for the purpose of reducing their fat. They have been shut up in a room, and fed upon an amount of food only sufficient to sustain life, and consisting solely of dry bread and water. Dry bread and water however, in sufficient quantity, and an endurable captivity, are not infallible means of inducing leanness. ”

“ What had begun with scrutinizing my body before a mirror and weighing myself at least twice a day blossomed into an obsession. I became an expert on the subject of calories, reading every article and scanning every chart to ascertain that my daily intake of food never exceeded my minimum requirement. If I ate too much, I turned to exercise as a partner to dieting. Indulging in a late night snack would make it necessary to burn the calories before bedtime, and I would do 45 minutes of leg-kicks and lifts to alleviate the guilt of eating. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Taken in moderation they are easily digested, but if taken in excess they become a burden to the system. About 7 or 8 per cent of the weight of a normal body is fat, and this fat is formed chiefly from the fatty foods taken into the system, supplemented by the sugar and starch.
When the body becomes very fat, it is a disease, called obesity. Fat people are never healthy. The fat usurps the place that should be occupied by normal tissues and organs. It crowds the heart and the lungs, and even replaces the muscle cells in the heart. ”

“ And again—how often is it that fat, plethoric, meat-eating children, their faces looking as though the blood was just ready to ooze out, are with the greatest complacency exhibited by their parents as patterns of health! But let it ever be remembered, that the condition of the system popularly called rude or full health, and which is the result of high feeding, is too often closely bordering on a state of disease. ”

“ Another consequence is, that persons who sleep soundly, always refuse every thing that looks the least like fatigue. The excess of assimilation is then borne away by the torrent of circulation. It takes possession, by a process, the secret of which nature has reserved to herself, of some hundredths of hydrogen, and fat is formed to be deposited in the tubes of the cellular tissue.
SEQUEL. The last cause of obesity is excess of eating and drinking.
There was justice in the assertion, that one of the privileges of the human race is to eat without hunger, and drink without thirst. ”

“ The differentiation between starvation and fasting is made upon the basis that starvation is the consequence of food denied, either by accident or design, to a system clamoring for sustenance, and that fasting consists in intentional abstinence from food by a system diseased and, as a result, non-desirous of sustenance until rested, cleansed, and again ready for the labor of digestion. ”

“ The study of the amount of the different forms of diet which is needed by people at rest, and by those who are active, is valuable only to enable us to construct dietaries with care for masses of men and where economy is an object. In dealing with cases such as I shall describe, it is needful usually to give and to have digested a surplus of food, so that we are more concerned now to know the forms of food which thin or fatten, and the means which aid us to digest temporarily an excess. ”

“ The reason that certain people take on weight easily and become "stout," is because of constitutional tendency, good digestion, and excess of food. As a general fact, the overweights are "large feeders," and they not only look well but feel well, for they have much less stomach trouble than the average mortal, and in cheerful endowment of soul they rank the highest among all the people. ”

“ If starvation is combined with very vigorous exercise, the reduction of weight is bound to be rapid, since metabolism cannot be carried on without fuel, and if not enough fuel is supplied in the form of food, the body will have to furnish it and the stored fat is the place from which it will be taken. ”