Perfect health is impossible for obese people, but it is within the reach of lean ones. In getting well, it is often necessary to become quite slender, but after the system has cleansed itself, it gains in weight again. It may take from several months to several years to obtain a normal weight after the ravages of disease. A healthy body is self-regulating and will be as heavy as it ought to be. Those who eat too much in order to gain weight sometimes wreck their digestive and assimilative powers to such an extent that they lose a great deal of weight, and the more they eat the more they lose. Then it is necessary to reduce the food intake until digestion and assimilation catch up with supply. Then if the eating is right the individual goes to the proper weight and retains it. The slender people are in the safest physical condition. The vast amount of statistics gathered by the life insurance companies bears this out. Remember that fat is a low grade tissue, which sometimes crowds out high grade tissue, that an excess indicates degeneration and that obesity is a disease. All fat people eat too much, even though they consider themselves small eaters. They should regulate their eating and drinking so that they will return to a normal weight. This is the only safe way to reduce. Pay no attention to underweight. Eat what the body requires and is able to digest and assimilate, without causing any inconvenience. The organism will take care of the rest. To attempt to force weight onto a body at the expense of discomfort, disease, reduced efficiency and premature death shows poor judgment. Losing weight does not matter at all if there is no discomfort or disease. It is all right to be a little lighter during summer than in winter. In discussing food and its use, two words are frequently employed, digestion and fermentation. Strictly speaking, digestion is largely a process of fermentation, consisting of the breaking down of complex substances into simple ones, by means of ferments. However, in the popular mind digestion and fermentation are not synonymous, and will not be so considered in this book. To make my meaning clear, in this book the words will have the following meaning: Digestion--the normal breaking down of food and formation into substances that can be used by the blood for building, repairing and producing heat and energy. Fermentation--the abnormal breaking down of food in the digestive tract, producing discomfort and health impaired. This process manifests in various ways, such as the production of much gas in the digestive tract or hyperacidity of the body. We will consider digestion as a process conducive to health, but fermentation, as one that leads to disease, being an early stage of digestive derangement. CHAPTER IV. OVEREATING.