The Fun of Getting Thin | Page 9

mind is clearer; my body is better. I figure I have added a good many years to
my life.
And all this time I have had everything I wanted to eat, but not all I wanted to eat until I
got myself readjusted to the new system. I missed the alcohol at first, but that is all over
now. It was a part of the game and I used to think a necessary part. I have cured myself of
that delusion. If there is a thing on earth the matter with me the ablest doctors in this
country can't find out what it is. I am a rejuvenated, reconstructed person, no longer fat,
aged forty-three--and the White Man's Hope!
As to the exercise end of it, there wasn't any exercise end. It happened that I met a man
last March, when I was in the first throes of this campaign, who had made some study of
the human body. I liked him because he was modest about what he knew, and not a
faddist. We talked about exercise. He told me one thing that stuck. He said: "Walk a little
every day. If you have half an hour walk a mile. If you have an hour walk two miles.
Don't try to see how many miles you can walk in the half-hour or the hour, but take your
time. Look at things as you go along. Be leisurely about it. When a man goes out for a
walk and walks as hard as he can or does anything else in the shape of exercise as hard as
he can he is subjecting himself to just as much nerve strain as he can subject himself to in
any other way. Be calm about your walking, or whatever else you do."
Formerly it had been my custom to plug out after breakfast and gallop three or four miles
as hard as I could and then go to work. I cut that out. I walked an easy, leisurely mile or
two miles, looking at the trees and flowers and watching the people and looking into shop
windows, and I got a lot of good out of it. Then it grew hot, and I cut my walking to half
a mile or so down to my office in the morning and back at night. Occasionally, after
dinner, I would walk a couple of miles. This summer I went fishing and tramped about
some, but not much. In reality, I had no scheme of exercise, and I took little. I didn't need
it. I didn't have masses of food and drink in me to be burned up. I was normal.
As I said, I suppose all this is absurdly unscientific--and I don't give a hoot if it is. It
worked for me. I don't know whether it will work for any other person on this earth. Nor
do I care. If you want to try it on, provided you are fat, here are the specifications: I
assume it is an axiom that we all eat too much. I know I did--about sixty per cent too
much. Still, I guarantee nothing. I make no claims. I have set down the facts; and the only
warning, advice or admonition I have to give is that any person who makes up his mind
to try this method and thinks he isn't in for the hardest struggle of his life would do well

not to try. This isn't a frolic. It's a fight.

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