Diet and Health | Page 2

needs it? You don't
dare to any longer. You never wanted to be fat anyway, but you did not
know how to reduce, and it is proverbial how little you eat. Why, there
is Mrs. Natty B. Slymm, who is beautifully thin, and she eats twice as
much as you do, and does not gain an ounce. You know positively that
eating has nothing to do with it, for one time you dieted, didn't eat a
thing but what the doctor ordered, besides your regular meals, and you

actually gained.
You are in despair about being anything but fat, and--! how you hate it.
But cheer up. I will save you; yea, even as I have saved myself and
many, many others, so will I save you.
[Sidenote: Spirituality vs. Materiality]
[Sidenote: A Long, Long Battle]
It is not in vain that all my life I have had to fight the too, too solid.
Why, I can remember when I was a child I was always being consoled
by being told that I would outgrow it, and that when I matured I would
have some shape. Never can I tell pathetically "when I was married I
weighed only one hundred eighteen, and look at me now." No, I was a
delicate slip of one hundred and sixty-five when I was taken.
I never will tell you how much I have weighed, I am so thoroughly
ashamed of it, but my normal weight is one hundred and fifty pounds,
and at one time there was seventy pounds more of me than there is now,
or has been since I knew how to control it. I was not so shameless as
that very long, and as I look back upon that short period I feel like
refunding the comfortable salary received as superintendent of an
hospital; for I know I was only sixty-five per cent efficient, for
efficiency decreases in direct proportion as excess weight increases.
Everybody knows it.
The Meeting Is Now Open for Discussion
Jolly Mrs. Sheesasite has the floor and wants some questions answered.
You know Mrs. Sheesasite; her husband recently bought her a pair of
freight scales.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Sheesasite]
"Why is it, Doctor, that thin people can eat so much more than fat
people and still not gain?"

[Sidenote: Me Answering]
"First: Thin people are usually more active than fat people and use up
their food.
"Second: 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.
[Illustration: Fireless Cookers.]
"And there are baby fireless cookers and children fireless cookers. The
same dietetic rules apply to them as to the adult."
"I recognize Mrs. Tiny Weyaton; then you, Mrs. Knott Little."
[Sidenote: Mrs. Weyaton]
"We have heard you say that fat people eat too much, and still we eat so
little?"
[Sidenote: Me Again]
"Yes, you eat too much, no matter how little it is, even if it be only one
bird-seed daily, if you store it away as fat. For, hearken; food, and food
only (sometimes plus alcohol) maketh fat. Not water--not air--verily,
nothing but food maketh fat. (And between you and me, Mrs. Weyaton,
just confidential like--don't tell it--we know that the small appetite story
is a myth.)"
[Sidenote: Mrs. Knott Little]
"But, Doctor, is it not true that some individuals inherit the tendency to
be fat, and can not help it, no matter what they do?"
[Sidenote: Doctor]

"Answer to first part--Yes.
"Answer to second part--No! It is not true that they cannot help it; they
have to work a little harder, that is all. It is true that being fat is a
disease with some, due to imperfect working of the internal secretory
glands, such as the thyroid, generative glands, etc.; but that is not true
fat such as you have. Yours, and that of the other members who are
interested, is due to overeating and underexercising.
[Sidenote: Not?]
"Those diseased individuals should be under the care of a physician.
Probably the secretory glands are somewhat inactive or sluggish in the
healthy fat individual. I use the word healthy here in contradistinction
to the other type. In reality, individuals very much overweight are not
really healthy, and they should also visit their physician."
"Yes, Mrs. Ima Gobbler?"
[Sidenote: Mrs. Ima Gobbler]
[Sidenote: Doctor Dear]
"But, Doctor dear, what's the use of dieting? I only get fatter after I
stop."
(Answering delicate like, for I'm fond of her and she is sensitive):
"You fat--! You make me fatigued! You never diet long enough to get
out of the fireless cooker class.