The Fun of Getting Thin | Page 3

it. I have been all through that phase of it, and I know; and I also know by heart the
patter of the persons who recommend it. Further, I know the person round the forties
doesn't live who enjoys this sort of thing--no matter what he says about it; and without
enjoyment exercise is of no use or worse than useless. 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. There's no need of saying anything further on that subject.
Then there remains the dietary method--the old familiar friend, diet. Starting with
William Banting--maybe it didn't start with William, but before him--but, starting with
Bill for present purposes, there have been more systems of diet invented and promulgated
than there have been systems of religion--and that means about one in every hundred has
evolved a system.
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. Basically, however,
the antiflesh diets are about the same. 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.
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. It can be done. One of these diets can be followed if
the will-power is there, and the flesh will come off; but the method does not conduce to
the best results--the physical force is reduced, and there is a much easier way.
I have one of these diet lists before me now from the highest-priced flesh-reducing
specialist in the world, who claims to have taken mountains of flesh off mountainous men.
In the beginning, for example, it says: "You will understand, of course, that sugar is
entirely debarred. Also, that fats, milk, cheese, cream, eggs, and so on, are cut off for the
time being. Also that bread and farinaceous foods are all cut off. In place of bread or toast
you must use gluten biscuits." For breakfast, in this dietary, one or two gluten biscuits are
allowed and a cup of unsweetened coffee. Also, six ounces of lean grilled steak, chops or
chicken, and any white fish--or the whites of two eggs.
This is about the layout for luncheon and dinner. It is all about as exciting and appetizing
as that. The proposition is, of course, that you are not taking food which will make fat
and you must, therefore, inevitably lose flesh. So far so good; but the difficulty is not in
the system, but in the hardship of carrying it out. 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