Down the Scale or Up...

Part 1

Down the Scale Or Up...

by BARBARA ABEL

Copyright 1939—Revised 1948 NATIONAL DAIRY COUNCIL CHICAGO 6 (19) 1958

This will be music to your ears

Introduction TO SLENDERNESS

Not skinniness! It’s no light matter, Hortense, this question of figures. You can figure on that. Even the new styles won’t hide the awful fact that you bulge where you shouldn’t, OR that you own no curves where you should.

Yes, it’s a tough racket melting the too, too solid flesh. Figure how much you have crept up on the scale, let your doctor figure how fast you dare go down without landing—flop—farther than you ever intended. This little book? It’s encouragement, blandishment, a little judicious enragement—but it isn’t medicament.

How about reducing tricks? Well, Dumpling, let’s take a look. Glands? A slick trick for a few, probably not you. Bath salts? They dissolve the budget, nothing more. Laxatives? Money in the promoter’s pocket. Thyroid and other drugs? No, no, NO!

Suppose you want to go up the scale? Put some curves in place of angles? Improve the pep and disposition? Reverse what the fat gal does. Where she envies, you eat. Where she hustles, you rest. When she refuses a snack, you snatch it.

Either way you go on the scale—up or down—it comes back largely to how much you eat, when, and most important, what. Either way you go, don’t neglect—milk, cheese, eggs, meat, and fish—fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain cereals. Emphasize salt and water to gain, cut down on both to lose.

Cheerio, whichever way you’re bound. The diet does it. You can figure on that, lady!

W. W. BAUER, M.D. Director, Bureau of Health Education American Medical Association

DESIRABLE WEIGHTS FOR WOMEN Ages 25 and Over

After thirty it is better to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.

HEIGHT WEIGHT IN POUNDS (as ordinarily dressed) (with shoes) Small Build Medium Build Large Build

4 ft. 11 in. 104-111 110-118 117-127 5 ft. 0 in. 105-113 112-120 119-129 5 ft. 2 in. 110-118 117-125 124-135 5 ft. 4 in. 116-125 124-132 131-142 5 ft. 6 in. 123-132 130-140 138-150 5 ft. 8 in. 129-139 137-147 145-158 5 ft. 10 in. 136-147 145-155 152-166

COMES THE DAY!

There comes a day in many a woman’s life when she has a THOUGHT. Namely: “I MUST start on a diet.”

A mere trifle may bring on this thought. Such as:

a) a saleswoman murmurs, “Well, dear, perhaps a size 38 would be just a wee bit more comfy.”

b) a taxi driver asks, “Where to, Madam?” (they’ve always called you “Miss”).

c) a husbandly voice commands, “Sit in front with me, Sonnie, and give mother the back seat where she can spread.”

d) walking down Main Street you catch a quick, dreadfully candid glimpse of yourself in a plate glass window. “Heavens!”

If the THOUGHT has come to you, it is likely, alas, to be followed swiftly by second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. Thus:

2) “Oh well, I’m not so very fat.”

3) “As it is, I don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

4) “Anyhow, I come by it naturally—look at my own mother!”

5) “Besides, diets are dreadful.”

Part 2

We won’t argue with you about thoughts 2, 3 or 4, assuming that you know more about your weight, your intake, and your mother than we do. But when you get to thought 5, we rise up, thus:

DIETS NEED NOT BE DREADFUL

(If this booklet doesn’t prove it, then you go right on eating food and we’ll have to eat the booklet.)

DON’T FALL FOR FALLACIES!

You can easily talk yourself out of dieting by falling for one of those old fallacies that women hug to their (ample) bosoms, namely:

“What I really need is a new girdle.”

“To be slim and svelte, all you need to do is to ooze yourself into our Streamliner Stretch.” Sez the ad. “Pooh!” sez we. Common courtesy should tell you that you have to meet a two-way stretch half-way. No sixteen-ounce trifle of satin and elastic is going to cope with 160 pounds of womanhood, and stay svelte. Science is wonderful, my dear, but it’s not that good!

“I really need my extra weight for reserve.”

We freely admit that camels are said to store up extra fat for reserve in their humps. Camels lead hard lives. But when were you last in the Sahara Desert?

“I haven’t the will power to go on a reducing diet.”

It isn’t will power so much as choice power that’s needed. We complimented a girl recently for sticking so faithfully to a diet. “Honestly, it isn’t a bit hard now,” she said. “I simply looked myself in the eye one day and asked, ‘Well, which do you choose—to step into a nifty 36 without alterations? Or fudge cake?’ After I really set my mind on the 36, the fudge cake just bored me.” (There must be a moral here somewhere.)

“Oh, well, I’ll start on a diet ... next week.”

All we can say to this is that statistics (and human nature) prove that you won’t.

THE CASE OF MRS. PLENTEOUS

So far we’ve been appealing to your good looks. Here goes for a try at your good sense. (You must have some, or you wouldn’t still be reading.) We refer to good sense about health.

Some women are beautiful, some are healthy, some are both, and some are neither. And into the last class fall (or roll) the definitely overweight.

Now you’re going to cry, “Nonsense! Look at Mrs. Plenteous; she’s enormous, and as healthy as a horse.”

Well, we don’t know Mrs. Plenteous personally, but we’ll take your word that she’s a human being, and as such she was never intended to be enormous. She was made according to a careful pattern that hasn’t varied in thousands of years, by an expert designer who put strength and usefulness and beauty into his designs. Mrs. Plenteous has the regulation number of bones, muscles, and vital organs (barring operations). None of them is enormous. Each was built to carry around a certain weight without undue strain. If Mrs. Plenteous is enormous, her organs are carrying around an enormous strain. They can take it—for a while—and they will—for a while. But Mrs. Plenteous is not really healthy, she’s just lucky—so far.

DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT

Ask your doctor. Ask your insurance agent (if you can edge in a word). They will tell you, we think, that excessive waistlines tend to go along with shorter lifelines. Medical records warn us that the overweight (or underweight, see page 21) person is much more susceptible to illness than the person whose weight is normal. And how surgeons loathe operating through layers of fat! And by the way, look around you at a roomful of elderly people. Aren’t most of them rather willowy? The “enormous” ones left early.

SAFETY FIRST!

There are so many tricky health questions involved in reducing that we are not going to take the responsibility of advising you specifically how to do it. We do suggest, however, that you:

1) See your doctor. If you haven’t a doctor of your own, see somebody else’s. He’ll be glad to become yours for the asking. He knows much more about you than you do, having spent a great deal of time and money to learn it, which you never did. Perhaps an ordinary reducing diet is not for you. Perhaps you have funny glands or a messy metabolism, which he will discover by careful tests and experiments. Perhaps you are not as overweight as you think you are.

2) Do what your doctor tells you. This will surprise him very much, but will also please and flatter him, and will cause him to work like mad on your case.

3) Don’t take any advice from your friends. You know very well that you don’t agree with their politics, approve of their hats, or care much for their children. Why should you trust them on a matter much more intimate and vital?

4) Don’t try short cuts. It took time to put on those extra pounds, and it will take time to get them off. Don’t be beguiled by success stories of fad diets or slimming salts. You want to reduce your weight only—not your chances of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These magic potions may be harmless in nine cases out of ten, but it’s maybe just your luck to draw number ten!

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, GIRLS?

... into the pantry! To hear us talk about diets you might be thinking that we disapprove of food in general. Not so; we love it! Both kinds, the Protective Foods and the Energy Foods.

Part 3

LIVE—AND ENJOY LIFE

The Protective Foods keep you alive. The Energy Foods keep you enjoying life. Energy foods are like the gas in your car; they give you the quick start, the power to go places, the speed to get there fast. If you’ve ever run out of gas on a country road, you know how important energy is.

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