The Fun of Getting Thin | Page 5

and eating everything that came my
way. Also, I drank some--not excessively, but some whisky and some beer, and
occasionally some wine and cocktails--about the average amount of drinking the average
man does. I thought I was getting too fat, and I wrestled with a bicycle all one summer,
taking long rides and plugging round a good deal. I did some centuries, but continued
eating like a horse--naturally because of the outdoor exercise--and drank a good deal of
beer. As will be seen, all the fat I had was legitimate enough. I put it on myself. There
was no hereditary nonsense about it. I was responsible for every ounce of it. The net
result of that summer's bicycle campaign was a gain of five pounds in weight. I was
harder--but I was fatter, too.
When I was thirty-five I began to experiment. I then weighed two hundred and
twenty-five pounds. I went to the canned-exercise, the physical-torture professor, the diet,
the salts, and all the rest of it, taking off a few pounds but putting it all back again--and
more--as soon as I stopped.
These attempts numbered about two a year. Between times I ate as I wanted to and drank
as I pleased. Things ran along until the first of January, 1911. I knew I was getting fatter,
for my tailor told me so and my belts and old clothes all proved it. Still, I didn't bother
much. I thought I was lingering round about two hundred and thirty-five--too much, of
course; but I got away with it pretty well, except in hot weather and when I went up in the
high mountains, and I was reasonably content. I was fat, all right. My waist was only two
inches smaller than my chest and that meant my waist was forty-four inches in girth. As a
matter of fact, being scant five feet ten and a half, I was bigger than a house; but I
deluded myself with that stuff about my broad shoulders and my deep chest, and thought
it didn't show. It did show, of course. I was a fat man--a big fat man--carrying forty
pounds or more of excess weight.
I had dieted and quit; exercised and quit; gone on the waterwagon and fallen off; had
fussed round a good deal, spending a lot of money in the attempt, and I was getting fatter
all the time. I hated to admit that fact. I tried to fool myself into the conviction that I
wasn't getting any larger--and all the time I knew I was. I even went so far as to stop
getting on the scales; and when anybody--as almost everybody did--said, "Why, you're
getting bigger, ain't you?" I always replied: "No, I think not. I stick along about two
hundred and thirty-five pounds."
A year ago last summer I went up into the mountains, where I usually go for my fun. I
had noticed a shortness of breath and a wheeziness in previous summers, and had felt my
heart pounding pretty hard; but that summer I noticed these things acutely. I couldn't get
any air to breathe. My heart pounded like a pneumatic riveter. Any little exercise tired me;
and when in the lowlands in hot weather I was the perspiring marvel and the most

uncomfortable as well as the sloppiest person you ever saw. It was fierce!
I was doing a good deal of walking in those days--had to burn up the fuel I was taking
into my body. Also, I noticed it was mighty hard to keep awake after dinner unless I got
out into the air and kept moving. I felt well enough and the doctors said I was organically
all right. I kept informed on those points--but I was fat! Also, though I lied to myself, I
knew I was getting fatter.





CHAPTER III
FACING THE TISSUE
On New Year's Day, 1911, I weighed myself. I don't know why, for I hadn't been on a
scale for two or three years. I set the weight at two hundred and thirty-five and it bounded
up like a rubber ball; so I shoved it along to two hundred and forty and it still stayed up in
the air. When I got a balance I found I weighed two hundred and forty-seven pounds. I
was amazed! Also, I was scared; for it instantly occurred to me that if I had gone up to
two hundred and forty-seven in two or three years from two hundred and thirty-five I
should keep on going up if my manner of living didn't change--and that presently I should
weigh three hundred!
That two hundred and forty-seven pounds was a facer. I was forced to admit to myself
that I was fat, disgustingly fat--too fat; and