The Fun of Getting Thin | Page 8

tragedy--a grim, relentless tragedy! It was acute physical suffering. My
body cried out for that same amount of food I had been giving it all those years. I wanted
to give it that same amount. I have had to leave the table time and time again to get hold
of myself and go back to the smaller portions I had allotted to myself. I liked to eat, you
know.
Nothing much happened for a few weeks, though the waistband of my trousers grew
looser. Then a lot of excess baggage seemed to drop away all at once. I weighed myself
and found I had taken off twenty-five pounds. Friends told me to quit--that I should
overdo it. I laughed at them. 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. I knew I wasn't
sick. Indeed, I was just beginning to get well.
By the end of three months I had taken off thirty-five pounds. It was coming off well, too.
My face wasn't haggard or wrinkled. I looked fit. My eye was clear and my double chin
had disappeared. Also, I had conquered my fight with my appetite. I had won out. I was
satisfied with the smaller quantities of food and I felt better than I had in twenty
years--stronger, fitter--and was better, mentally and physically. After that it was a cinch. I
kept along, eating everything on the bill-of-fare, but in small quantities. I didn't vary my
diet a bit, except for the eggs at breakfast. If I wanted pie I ate a small piece. If I wanted
ice cream I ate a small dish. If I wanted pudding I ate some of that. I ate fat meat and lean
meat and spaghetti, and everything else interdicted by the reduction dietists--only in
small quantities! And I kept on getting smaller and smaller.
The fat came off from everywhere. I had been incased with it apparently. My waist
decreased seven inches. A big layer of fat came off my chest and abdomen. My legs and
arms grew smaller but harder. Even my fingers grew smaller. My excess of chin
evaporated. And at the end of the fifth month I had taken off fifty-five pounds. I weighed
then one hundred and ninety-five pounds, which is what I weigh today.
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;
but I have maintained my schedule of eating and I have not taken any alcohol. I figure I
can stay where I am indefinitely on that program--and that is my program indefinitely.
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. I didn't get to cutting down clothes until I was
sure I would stick. Since that time the tailors have had a picnic at my expense. My shirts
were too big. Instead of wearing a seventeen-and-three-quarters collar, I now wear a
sixteen-and-three-quarters. My waist is seven inches smaller. I even had to have a seal

ring I wear cut down so it would not slip off my finger. While in the transition stage I
looked like a scarecrow. My clothes hung on me like bags.
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 do not see how he can keep it on and not kill himself. They
tell me I look like a boy--and I feel like one. I'm as active as I was twenty years ago.
When I was in the mountains this summer, at an altitude of seventy-five hundred feet, I
could climb slopes with no exhaustion that I couldn't have gone fifteen feet up the year
before. My