Diet and Health.

by Lulu Hunt Peters.

Read This First

I am sorry I cannot devise a key by which to read this book, as well as a Key to the Calories, for sometimes you are to read the t.i.tle headings and side explanations before the text. Other times you are supposed to read the text and then the headings. It really does not matter much as long as you read them both. Be sure to do that. They are clever. _I wrote them myself_.

I have been accused of trying to catch you coming and going, because I have included in my book the right methods of gaining weight, as well as those for losing weight. But this is not the reason--though I don't object to doing that little thing--the reason is that the lack of knowledge of foods is the foundation for both overweight and underweight.

I did want my publishers to get this out in a cheaper edition, thinking that more people could have it, and thus it would be doing more good; but they have convinced me that that idea was a false claim of my mortal mind, and that the more you paid for it, the more you would appreciate it. I have received many times, and without grumbling on my part, ten dollars for the same advice given in my office. Perhaps on this line of reasoning we should have ten dollars for the book. Those of you who think so may send the balance on through my publishers.

L.H.P.

Los Angeles, California June, 1918

1

Preliminary Bout

_Rule to Find Ideal Adult Net Weight_

Multiply number of inches over 5 ft. in height by 5-1/2; add 110. For example: Height 5 ft. 7 in. without shoes.

7 x 5-1/2 = 38-1/2 + 110 ------- Ideal weight 148-1/2

If under 5 ft. multiply number of inches under 5 ft. by 5-1/2 and subtract from 110.

_Are You Thin and Do You Want to Gain?_

[Sidenote: _Don't Read This_]

Skip this chapter. It will not interest you in the least. I will come to you later. I am not particularly interested in you anyway, for I cannot get your point of view. How any one can want to be anything but thin is beyond my intelligence. However, knowing that there are such deluded individuals, I have been constrained to give you advice. You won't find it spontaneous nor from the heart, but if you follow my directions I will guarantee that you will gain; providing, of course, you have no organic trouble; and the chances are that by giving proper attention to your diet you will gain anyway, and maybe in pa.s.sing lose your trouble.

Who knows?

[Sidenote: _Bad Business_]

In war time it is a crime to h.o.a.rd food, and fines and imprisonment have followed the expose of such practices. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of individuals all over America who are h.o.a.rding food, and that one of the most precious of all foods! _They have vast amounts of this valuable commodity stored away in their own anatomy_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: contents noted]

Now fat individuals have always been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amus.e.m.e.nt, you are now viewed with distrust, suspicion, and even aversion! How dare you h.o.a.rd fat when our nation needs it? You don't dare to any longer. You never wanted to be fat anyway, but you did not know how to reduce, and it is proverbial how little you eat. Why, there is Mrs. Natty B. Slymm, who is beautifully thin, and she eats twice as much as you do, and does not gain an ounce. You know positively that eating has nothing to do with it, for one time you dieted, didn't eat a thing but what the doctor ordered, besides your regular meals, and you actually gained.

You are in despair about being anything but fat, and--! how you hate it.

But cheer up. I will save you; yea, even as I have saved myself and many, many others, so will I save you.

[Sidenote: _Spirituality vs. Materiality_]

[Sidenote: _A Long, Long Battle_]

It is not in vain that all my life I have had to fight the too, too solid. Why, I can remember when I was a child I was always being consoled by being told that I would outgrow it, and that when I matured I would have some shape. Never can I tell pathetically "when I was married I weighed only one hundred eighteen, and look at me now." No, I was a delicate slip of one hundred and sixty-five when I was taken.

I never will tell you how much I have weighed, I am so thoroughly ashamed of it, but my normal weight is one hundred and fifty pounds, and at one time there was seventy pounds more of me than there is now, or has been since I knew how to control it. I was not so shameless as that very long, and as I look back upon that short period I feel like refunding the comfortable salary received as superintendent of an hospital; for I know I was only sixty-five per cent efficient, for efficiency decreases in direct proportion as excess weight increases.

Everybody knows it.

_The Meeting Is Now Open for Discussion_

Jolly Mrs. Sheesasite has the floor and wants some questions answered.

You know Mrs. Sheesasite; her husband recently bought her a pair of freight scales.

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Sheesasite_]

"Why is it, Doctor, that thin people can eat so much more than fat people and still not gain?"

[Sidenote: _Me Answering_]

"First: Thin people are usually more active than fat people and use up their food.

"Second: Thin people have been proved to radiate fifty per cent more heat per pound than fat people; in other words, fat people are regular fireless cookers! They hold the heat in, it cannot get out through the packing, and the food which is also contained therein goes merrily on with fiendish regularity, depositing itself as fat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fireless Cookers.]

"And there are baby fireless cookers and children fireless cookers. The same dietetic rules apply to them as to the adult."

"I recognize Mrs. Tiny Weyaton; then you, Mrs. Knott Little."

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Weyaton_]

"We have heard you say that fat people eat too much, and still we eat so little?"

[Sidenote: _Me Again_]

"Yes, you eat too much, _no matter how little it is_, even if it be only one bird-seed daily, _if you store it away as fat_. For, hearken; food, and food only (sometimes plus alcohol) maketh fat. Not water--not air--verily, nothing but food maketh fat. (And between you and me, Mrs.

Weyaton, just confidential like--don't tell it--we know that the small appet.i.te story is a myth.)"

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Knott Little_]

"But, Doctor, is it not true that some individuals inherit the tendency to be fat, and can not help it, no matter what they do?"

[Sidenote: _Doctor_]

"Answer to first part--Yes.