Diet and Health - Lulu Hunt Peters (great books to read .txt) 📗
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Have I not been nice to you? All right, relax and watch yourself get into the class of the plumptically adequate.
And if you don't succeed after a faithful trial, take the milk-cure, with its three to six weeks' absolute rest.
Recapitulation
1. Calm yourself.
2. Sleep.
3. Exercise.
4. Food.
5. Masticate
6. Delete the details.
7. Milk-cure.
Review
1. Repeat Elbert Hubbard's advice.
2. Give three reasons why worry can make
you thin.
3. Define "Medical Trust" and "League
for Medical Freedom."
4. Memorize paragraph about nature
5. Enumerate the things you can eat to
increase your calories.
It is practically impossible to reduce weight through exercise alone, unless one can do a tremendous amount of it. For the food that one eats is usually enough to cover the energy lost by the exercise.
However, exercise is a very important feature of any reducing program; not because of the fat that is burned up in the exercise—and there is some burned—but for the reason that it is necessary to keep one in a healthy condition. The muscles, the internal organs, the bones, the brain, are all benefited—in fact, the entire system.
The exercises described hereinafter will help make you fat or thin, and they will keep you supple, graceful, and light on your feet, so that when I tell my husband that he must dance with you, Madam, he will not say, "Nothing stirring," and when you, Professor, ask me to dance, I will not curse the day I was born.
If you have not been accustomed to exercise, I warn you to take up only one or two at a time and do each one a few times only. You will be atrociously sore, and you will realize that you have muscles of which you wotted not.
However, persist, if you are sure there are no organic reasons why you shouldn't—such as a weak heart. (In case you are very much overweight, I think it advisable to wait until you have reduced somewhat.)
It is splendid if you can belong to a gymnasium or to a physical culture class, but ten to fifteen minutes' systematic daily exercise practiced with vim, and each set followed by deep breathing, will do more good than a gymnasium spasmodically attended. Brisk walking with a long stride isn't so bad; in fact, if taken with a very long stride it will twist 'most every organ you have in your body.
There are hundreds of exercises you can take. If you will notice little rascal's illustrations you will find many good ones. Those illustrating the beginning of this chapter are excellent.
If possible, it is best to take the exercises on arising in the morning, but if you have a household to care for you may not be able to do so. For those who have to do their own work, it may be well to do the work first. You can do it in half the time if you plan it carefully and speed up. (This advice is not for my thin friends; their speedometers register too high already.) It does not matter so much when the exercises are done as that they are done, and done every day for the rest of your life, with the possible exception of two or three days a month.
Gallstones, permanent stiff joints, and other little things like that will have a hard time forming.
My Exercises
(The services of my noted artist I was able to obtain with great difficulty, as he was engaged in the more important work of making a swagger stick. I finally secured him by the promise of an ice cream cone and twenty-three cents to go with his two cents so that he could buy a Thrift Stamp. He is given due credit on the title page.)
These exercises executed with vim, vigor, and vip—deep breathing between each set—will take ten to fifteen minutes. Re-read my warning.
1. Feet together, arms outstretched, palms up, describe as large a circle as possible. Fine for round shoulders and fat backs. Do slowly and stretch fifteen times. Smile.
2. Arms outstretched, swing to right and to left as far as possible at least 15 times each.
3. Bend sideways, to right and left, alternately, as far as possible at least 15 times each.
4. Revolve the body upon the hips from right to left at least 10 times, and left to right the same.
5. Bend and touch the floor with your fingers, without bending your knees, at least 15 times.
6. Knee-bending exercise, at least 15 times. This is hard at first.
7. Hand on door or wall, swing each leg back and forth at least 15 times. To the side 15 times. Turn head, raise arm, and tense both.
8. Step on chair with each foot at least 10 times. This is good for calf and thigh muscles. After a while you won't look as though you needed a derrick to get onto a street car.
9. Arms on sides of chair. Come down and touch abdomen. Fine for back and abdomen. Fifteen times.
10. Brush hair vigorously at least 200 double strokes all over the head, N.S.E.W., using a brush in each hand.
(Military brushes are best. If you can't purloin a set of your husband's, two ordinary brushes will do.) Now shake out the loose dandruff. This is one of the best exercises and must not be omitted, for it accomplishes two purposes. It is a good arm and chest exercise, and it gives a healthy scalp absolutely free from the dammdruff.
This for a few minutes, followed by this, the hot preferably at night.
8 At Last! How to ReduceThe title of this chapter indicates to whom it is addressed. All others please refrain from reading, for it is strictly private and confidential, and is intended only for those who need it.
You thin and you normal had better save it, though, for you may qualify later. You are keeping right on reading now! I'm surprised. I wanted to tell my fat friends that the first thing they have to do is to get control of their will power, and now I can't do it.
Somehow, will power with a layer of fat on it gets feeble. Don't laugh, you too thin! It gets worse than feeble, if there is no fat at all and the nervous system is starved, it—well, I won't say what it does, for I don't want to worry you.
Will power, being feeble to a greater or less degree, must be bolstered and aided a bit, to begin with, so—
First OrderTell loudly and frequently to all your friends that you realize that it is unpatriotic to be fat while many thousands are starving, that you are going to reduce to normal, and will be there in the allotted time. If you belong to a club, round up the overweights and form a section. Call it the "Watch Your Weight—Anti-Kaiser Class." Tax the members sufficiently to buy a good, accurate pair of scales. Meet once a week to weigh. Wear approximately the same weight clothes, and weigh at the same time in relation to eating. Do this whether or not you belong to a club. Once or twice a week is often enough to weigh. Scales vary, so try to use the same ones.
Don't be discouraged if some day after you have dieted well you seem to have gained. Nature sometimes seems fiendish that way. The excess weight is probably due to a retention of water, and will not be permanent. However, don't depend upon this too often! Usually, if you have gained when you think you ought not to, it is because Nature has been counting calories and you haven't.
Have the members listed on a weight chart conspicuously placed near the scales, and record accurately the weight weekly.
WATCH YOUR WEIGHT ANTI-KAISER CLASS Members' Names Normal
Weight Weight on Date Date Date Date Date Date
Those not reducing at least one pound per week to be fined soundly and the proceeds given to the Red Cross. That won't be a good way to raise funds for the chapter, though, for there will be no fines after the first week or so, when the members find what their maintenance diet should be and are consuming less than that.
I will explain this maintenance diet business. You shameless thin ones, call back your more polite comrades—this is important for all of you. (I shall also tell you more fully about this in the last chapter.)
The maintenance diet is one which maintains you at your present weight, i.e., you are not gaining or losing. You may be over or under normal, but are staying there. The intake equals the outgo.
When you eat less than your maintenance diet, you are going to supply the deficiency with your own fat.
So commit yourself on your honor that you are going to reduce or perish—no joke; you can't tell how near you are to it if you are much overweight. There are two general stages of fatty heart. In the first stage the heart is surrounded by a blanket of fat, and it also penetrates between the muscles. Later, if it goes on too long, the heart muscle itself degenerates to fat, then—
Shakespeare warns you to make thy body less, hence thy grace more; leave gormandizing, and know that the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider than for other men.
Second Order
Your stomach, long used to an excess of food for your needs—it may not be a large amount—but still, I repeat, being used to an excess of food for your needs, your stomach must be disciplined. It is undoubtedly distended, as it should not be.
A good way to show it that you are master is to fast for at least one day—drink nothing but pure water, hot or cold, as you prefer. It will protest vociferously and will tell all its friends, the different organs of your body, how you are persecuting it, and they will join the league against you and decide they will oust you from your position, and you will feel like—but don't mind it; it will soon know that you mean business, and, much chastened and considerably contracted, will take the next day a very small amount of food very gratefully.
If you do not want to be so severe with it you can allow it five glasses of hot or cold skim milk or buttermilk, one every three hours, say, at 10,1,4,7, and 10 o'clock. One glass is 80 calories, five equal 400 calories, which is not so much.
The baked potato and glass of skim milk diet, three times a day one day a week, which has its devotees, depends upon its low caloric content for its results. There is no magic in it, no yeast business which reduces. This is most wholesome, however, for potatoes contain a large amount of the potassium salts, which tend to counteract the effects of uric acid, and thus are good for the gouty type.
The beefsteak, the milk, and the fruit diets are also good. One can gain as well as
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