Diet and Health - Lulu Hunt Peters (great books to read .txt) 📗
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I love Billy Sunday's classical answer to the objection that his conversions were not permanent. He responded: "Neither is a bath!"
WHEN YOU START TO REDUCEyou will have the following to combat:
First: Your husband, who tells you that he does not like thin women. I almost hate my husband when I think how long he kept me under that delusion. Now, of course, I know all about his jealous disposition, and how he did not want me to be attractive.
Second: Your sister, who says, "Goodness, Lou, but you look old today; you looked lots better as you were."
Third: Your friends, who tell you that you are just right now; don't lose another pound! And other friends who tell you cheerful tales of people they have known who reduced, and who went into a decline, and finally died.
But you must not mind them. Smile, and tell them that you know all about it, and don't worry. Go serenely on your way, confident in your heart that you will look fully ten years younger when you get down to normal, no matter how you look in the interim. I don't see why women, and men, too, (secretly) worry so much about wrinkles. If the increased wrinkles on the face are accompanied by increased wrinkles in the gray matter, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. I'm sure I am much more interesting with wrinkles than I was without. I am to myself, anyway.
However, you will not be any more wrinkled if you reduce gradually, as I advise, and keep up your exercises at least fifteen minutes daily.
Take care of your face, alternate hot and cold water, glycerine one-quarter, rose water three-quarters, cold cream packs, massage gently, a little ice—you know what to do—you
need not fear. You will not only look ten
years younger and live twenty years longer—I assert it boldly—but your complexion and efficiency will be one hundred per cent better.
If there is anything comparable to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it. And when you find your corset coming closer and closer together (I advise a front lace, so this can be watched), and then the day you realize that you will have to stitch in a tuck or get a new one!
But don't be in a hurry to make your clothes smaller now. If they are loose they will show to the world that you are reducing. A fat person in a tight suit, unless it is perfectly new, should be interned.
I have said that food, and food only, causes fat. That gives you the cue to what you must do to get rid of it. No anti-fat medicines unless under the supervision of your scientific, educated physician. They are dangerous; most of them contain thyroid extract, arsenic, or mercury. Even the vendors of these harmful compounds in their advertisements are now saying to "stop harmful drugging," but urge you to adopt their particular delightful product, and, "without dieting or exercises, you will positively reduce," and so forth.
No drastic purges, no violent exercises, especially at first, and not too frequent nor prolonged Turkish baths. Epsom salts baths have little effect. If salts are used habitually internally, they are harmful. All of these are unscientific and unsuccessful, and the things they bring on are worse than the fat.
Now, if food is the only source of body substance, you see that you must study that question, and that is what I will give you—some lessons on foods and their values.
Heretofore you have known only in a dumb, despairing sort of way that all the foods you like are fattening, and all the advice you read and hear is that you must avoid them as a pestilence. And you settle down to your joyless fatness, realizing that it is beyond human strength to do that forever, and that you would rather die young and fat, anyway, than to have nothing to eat all your life but a little meat, fish, and sloshy vegetables. Study on, and you will find the reason your favorite foods are fattening.
But cast off your dejection. You don't have to avoid them!
Eat what you like and grow thin? Yes; follow me. I know it will be an exertion, but you must persist and go through with it. Nothing in life worth while is attained without some effort. So begin now; it is the price of liberty.
Review1. Give rule for normal weight.
2. How much excess food have you stored away?
3. Why more important than ever to reduce?
4. Why are fat individuals fireless cookers?
5. Give causes of excess fat.
NOTE: The Reviews which follow the chapters are important and the questions should be answered. To get the full benefit, Little Book must be studied, for it is the only authorized textbook of the "Watch Your Weights."
2 Key to the CaloriesSome one page the thin? They come back here.
CALORIE; symbol C.; a heat unit and food value unit; is that amount of heat necessary to raise one pound of water 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
There is a good deal of effort expended by many semi-educated individuals to discredit the knowledge of calories, saying that it is a foolish food science, a fallacy, a fetish, and so forth.
They reason, or rather say, that because there are no calories in some of the very vital elements of foods—the vitamines and the mineral salts—therefore it is not necessary to know about them. They further argue that their grandfathers never heard of calories and they got along all right. That grandfather argument always enrages my mortal mind.
Now you know that a calorie is a unit of measuring heat and food. It is not heat, not food; simply a unit of measure. And as food is of supreme importance, certainly a knowledge of how it should be measured is also of supreme importance.
You should know and also use the word calorie as frequently, or more frequently, than you use the words foot, yard, quart, gallon, and so forth, as measures of length and of liquids. Hereafter you are going to eat calories of food. Instead of saying one slice of bread, or a piece of pie, you will say 100 Calories of bread, 350 Calories of pie.
The following is the way the calorie is determined:
An apparatus known as the bomb calorimeter has two chambers, the inner, which contains the dry food to be burned, say a definite amount of sugar, and an outer, which is filled with water. The food is ignited with an electric connection and burned. This heat is transferred to the water. When one pound of water is raised 4 degrees Fahrenheit, the amount of heat used is arbitrarily chosen as the unit of heat, and is called the Calorie.
Food burned (oxydized) in the body has been proved to give off approximately the same amount of heat or energy as when burned in the calorimeter.
Can you see now why fats are valuable? Why they make fat more than any other food? They give off more than two and one-fourth times as much heat, or energy, as the other foods.
Notice that protein and carbohydrates have the same food value as to heat or energy, each 113 Calories to the dry ounce. However, they are not interchangeable; that is, carbohydrates will not take the place of protein for protein is absolutely necessary to build and repair tissue, and carbohydrates cannot do that. But fats and carbohydrates are interchangeable as fuel or energy foods.
Calories Needed per Day for Normal IndividualsThis depends upon age, weight, and physical activities; the baby and the growing child needing many more calories per pound per day than the adult, who has to supply only his energy and repair needs. The aged require still less than the young adult. As to weight; I have told you why overweight individuals need so little. As to physical activities; the more active, obviously the more calories needed, for every movement consumes calories.
The Maine lumbermen, for instance, while working during the winter months, consume from 5000 to 8000 Calories per day. But they do a tremendous amount of physical work.
Mental work does not require added nourishment. This has been proved, and if an excess be taken over what is needed at rest (if considerable exercise is not taken while doing the mental work) the work is not so well done.
In Round Numbers for the Day
(Remember that in general the boy needs as much as his father, and the girl as much as her mother.)
Example of Finding Number of Calories Needed
1. Determine normal weight by rule.
2. Multiply normal weight by number of calories needed per pound per day.
For example, say you weigh 220 or 125 lbs., but by the rule for your height your weight should be 150 lbs.; then 150 would be the number you would use.
By the rule I have given, adults require 15-20 Calories per pound per day, depending upon activity. For example, if you have no physical activities, then take the lowest figure, 15. 150x15—2250. Therefore your requirement, if your weight should be 150, is 2250 Calories per day.
Now, if you want to lose, cut down 500-1000 Calories per day from that.
Five hundred Calories equal approximately 2 ounces of fat. Two ounces per day would be about 4 pounds per month, or 48 pounds per year. Cutting out 1000 Calories per day would equal a reduction of approximately 8 pounds per month, or 96 pounds per year. These pounds you can absolutely lose by having a knowledge of food values (calories) and regulating your intake accordingly. You can now see the importance of a knowledge of calories.
1/2 lb. fat 2000 C
1/4 lb. fat 1000 C
1/8 lb. fat 500 C
If you want to gain, add gradually 500-1000 Calories per day.
Review1. Define Calorie, and tell how determined.
2. How many C. in 1 oz. fat? of carbohydrates? of protein?
3. Why are fats so fattening?
4. How many C. per day do you require? do mental workers?
5. Upon what do C. needed per day for normal individuals depend? Discuss.
3 Review and More DefinitionsFOOD: That which taken into the body builds and repairs tissue and yields energy in heat and muscular power.
CLASSES OF FOOD:
1. Protein, 18% of body weight.
2. Fats, 16% of body weight.
3. Carbohydrates, 1% of body weight.
4. Mineral matter, 5% of body weight.
5. Vitamines.
6. Water, 60% of body
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