Part 11

Do not drink much with your meals, unless the drink has food value by the addition of lots of cream or sugar, or both.

Decide how many calories you need for your activities, gradually add to your dietary until you have reached that number, and then some more, and you will gain as surely as the overweight individual will lose by doing the opposite. It may take a long time, or you may get results very rapidly, depending somewhat upon the individual characteristics. Gradually increase your butter, cream, sugar, chocolate, and so forth, as they are very high in food value.

Study the Key to the Calories and reckon your calories every day for a while. You have already noticed that the foods that you like are low in food value.

Here are some of the things you can take to add to your fuel:

A glass of milk, hot or cold, taken between meals and before retiring, will add about 500 calories.

Cream sauce on your vegetables will add to their value.

Cod liver oil, or olive oil, or cream, begun in small doses and gradually increased.

One malted milk, made with milk, syrup, egg, ice cream, whipped cream, and the malted milk, will add about 500 calories.

You remember the painful time that I spoke of when there was so much more of me than there ought to be? Well, the aforesaid concoction, made with milk, syrup, egg, ice cream, whipped cream, and the malted milk, was accessory before the fact, and also particeps criminis before the law.

I absorbed this phraseology by being president of the Professional Woman's Club, with its high-class women attorneys, ministers, dentists, Ph.D.'s, and "Medical Trust" doctors.

"Medical Trust."--The American Medical Association (A.M.A.), a powerful trust you can't get into unless you have a high preliminary education and are a graduate of a high-class medical college. Eleven years' training after the grammar school is their minimum standard now.

"League for Medical Ignorance."--The so-called "League for Medical Freedom"; the opponent of the above mentioned trust. Their standard--any old kind of a medical or religious training, two weeks or longer, engrafted on anyone who has the money to pay for the course. No education, no barrier; in fact, those of limited education make the loudest boosters for the league. In justice, I must say that many splendid, estimable persons belong to this league, not knowing these facts.

Fifth: See page 92 in my advice to the fat. It is as important for you as for them. (It always makes me mildly furious when I look up a word and am directed to seek some other locality. If it affects you that way--seek page 60 in my advice to you.)

Also have your teeth X-rayed. Blind abscesses at the roots will cause all sorts of aches and pains, as well as underweight.

Sixth: Don't talk so much. See if you can't leave out two-thirds of the totally unimportant, uninteresting details. A tremendous amount of energy is used in talking. This habit I would not say was confined to you, by any means; it is another one of those pretty nearly universal errors.

I will not give you a sample fattening menu, for it might be all out of proportion to what you could handle, and it would upset you. Make out your own menus, realizing that you must work gradually to the desired amount.

I am taking it for granted that you are organically sound, that your scientific, educated physician has said there is nothing the matter with you, except perhaps your "nervous" disposition.

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.

Exercise

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.