You will be surprised how much 1200 calories will be if the food is judiciously selected.

[Sidenote: _After All, Hunger Is Much More Agreeable Than Apoplexy_]

You may be hungry at first, but you will soon become accustomed to the change. I find that dry lemon or orange peel, or those little aromatic breath sweeteners, just a tiny bit, seem to stop the hunger pangs; or you may have a cup of fat-free bouillon or half an apple, or other low calorie food. (Count the calories here.)

One thousand calories less food per day equals four ounces of fat lost daily--approximately 8 pounds per month. If you do not want to lose so fast, do not cut down so much.

_Fourth Order_

[Sidenote: _You Register Joy_]

You may eat just what you like--candy, pie, cake, fat meat, b.u.t.ter, cream--but--_count your calories!_ You can't have many nor large helpings, you see; but isn't it comforting to know that you can eat these things? Maybe some meal you would rather have a 350-calorie piece of luscious pie, with a delicious 150-calorie tablespoonful of whipped cream on it, than all the succulent vegetables Luther Burbank could grow in California.

My idea of heaven is a place with me and mine on a cloud of whipped cream.

[Sidenote: _You Registered Too High_]

Now that you know you can have the things you like, proceed to make your menus containing very little of them.

_Fifth Order_

This is going to be your chief business and pursuit in life for the next few months, this reducing of your weight. However, keep up your Red Cross and all other activities, fast and furiously, so that you won't be thinking about yourself.

[Sidenote: _More Warnings_]

Don't reduce more than two or three pounds a week; two or less is better. If you are too cannibalistic, your heart, kidneys and nervous system are liable to suffer--you yourself are supplying too much fat in your dietary, and there are other scientific reasons against reducing too rapidly.

However, you may find that the first week or so you may reduce five or seven pounds; but don't worry about this, for that is a slushy, watery fat that goes easily.

If a claim like a cold should attack you, and after spraying nose and throat frequently with an antiseptic, and then denying the claim vigorously, it persists in running a severe course, better go back to maintenance diet for a few days.

[Sidenote: _Not Even While Cooking_]

_Don't "taste"!_ You will find the second taste much harder to resist than the first. If you have allowed in your daily program something between meals (a good plan), take it, but not otherwise.

Try not to overeat at any time, and thus undo the work that perhaps has taken you two or three days to accomplish. It will be all right occasionally, possibly one day a week, to eat up to your maintenance diet, but don't, I beg of you, go over it so that you will gain.

You will be tempted quite frequently, and you will have to choose whether you will enjoy yourself hugely in the twenty minutes or so that you will be consuming the excess calories, or whether you will dislike yourself cordially for the two or three days you lose by your lack of will power.

[Sidenote: _I Ought Not to Do This_]

I am afraid I am going to tell a story. I feel as though I were, and I don't want to. It is one I heard years ago at a teachers' convention at Riverside, when I was a tender, unsuspecting young school teacher, so it is perfectly good, albeit senile--and it ill.u.s.trates my point so well--so well--well, you have to put yourself in the place of the little chaps, Billie and Johnnie, of the kindergarten.

[Sidenote: _A Little Anatomical Story_]

It seems it was customary to bring a lunch, and Little-new-boy had come without one. Teacher asked Billie would he share? No, st.u.r.dily; not he.

But little Johnnie, he would. Some time later, Johnnie, with a frantic waving of his hand, and with just pride in his generosity, informed the cla.s.s that he had shared his lunch with Little-new-boy and he felt good is his little heart.

Billie stood his ground and stoutly declared that he ate his and he felt good in his little belly.

9

Autobiographical

I did not give our thin friends a sample menu for fear it would upset them; but nothing can upset your digestion, I know. However, I will not give you a sample menu, either, but will tell you what I eat when I go on a reduction regime, which for me is 1200 Calories.

You will notice, most of my calories I have at dinner in the evening.

You may not like this, but would rather have yours spread over the entire day; and you can suit your fancy, for it makes no difference as long as your total number per day stays within your reduction limit.

[Sidenote: _Make Out Several Menus if You Like_]

Don't think you have to follow my menu. You might gain on it! Study the Key and select your own.

Many will lose by going on the no-breakfast plan, or the no-lunch plan.

If they do reduce, it is because they have lowered their daily consumption of food, and not because of the no-breakfast or no-lunch plan _per se._

Fat seems to melt faster when the chief meal is in the middle of the day, and with only 200 or 300 calories of fruit for the evening meal. In this way you slim while you sleep.

MY BREAKFAST

1 slice very dry coa.r.s.e bread toast 1/4 in. thick 50 C.

b.u.t.ter, 1/4 cu. in 25 C.

Hot water flavored with coffee 00 C.

----- Total 75 C.

[Sidenote: _Slim While You Sleep! Clever?_]

You may prefer many more calories for breakfast, or none at all. This may not look good to you, but it means an awful lot in my young life, after my exercise and bath, to sit down to my little breakfast and read the papers.

Recently I have found that two cups of moderately hot water with the juice of a lemon answers just as well as the toast and watery coffee, and is probably better. You might like some fruit.

MY LUNCHEON

1 corn m.u.f.fin--I am patriotic 125 C.

1 pat b.u.t.ter 100 C.

1 cup coffee with 1 tbsp. cream 50 C.

------ Total 275 C.

If you are patriotic and constipated, subst.i.tute one bran m.u.f.fin. You can see that this is in reality a further extension of my sumptuous breakfast. If I get tired of this, I add a salad of