The Fun of Getting Thin: How to Be Happy and Reduce the Waist LineBlythe, Samuel G. (Samuel George)
Science
The Fun of Getting Thin: How to Be Happy and Reduce the Waist Line
Blythe, Samuel G. (Samuel George)
Obesity; Weight loss
There are certain economic phases of a campaign of this kind that should
be mentioned. It is expensive. Not one item of clothing, save my hat,
socks and shoes, which fitted me last January is of the slightest use to
me now. I didn't get to cutting down clothes until I was sure I would
stick. Since that time the tailors have had a picnic at my expense. My
shirts were too big. Instead of wearing a seventeen-and-three-quarters
collar, I now wear a sixteen-and-three-quarters. My waist is seven
inches smaller. I even had to have a seal ring I wear cut down so it
would not slip off my finger. While in the transition stage I looked
like a scarecrow. My clothes hung on me like bags.
Since I have had my clothes re-made and new ones constructed I am an
object of continual comment among my friends. They all marvel at my
changed appearance. They are all solicitous about my health. They do
not see how a man can take off more than fifty pounds and not hurt
himself. I do not see how he can keep it on and not kill himself. They
tell me I look like a boy--and I feel like one. I'm as active as I was
twenty years ago. When I was in the mountains this summer, at an
altitude of seventy-five hundred feet, I could climb slopes with no
exhaustion that I couldn't have gone fifteen feet up the year before. My
mind is clearer; my body is better. I figure I have added a good many
years to my life.
And all this time I have had everything I wanted to eat, but not all I
wanted to eat until I got myself readjusted to the new system. I missed
the alcohol at first, but that is all over now. It was a part of the
game and I used to think a necessary part. I have cured myself of that
delusion. If there is a thing on earth the matter with me the ablest
doctors in this country can't find out what it is. I am a rejuvenated,
reconstructed person, no longer fat, aged forty-three--and the White
Man's Hope!
As to the exercise end of it, there wasn't any exercise end. It happened
that I met a man last March, when I was in the first throes of this
campaign, who had made some study of the human body. I liked him because
he was modest about what he knew, and not a faddist. We talked about
exercise. He told me one thing that stuck. He said: "Walk a little
every day. If you have half an hour walk a mile. If you have an hour
walk two miles. Don't try to see how many miles you can walk in the
half-hour or the hour, but take your time. Look at things as you go
along. Be leisurely about it. When a man goes out for a walk and walks
as hard as he can or does anything else in the shape of exercise as hard
as he can he is subjecting himself to just as much nerve strain as he can
subject himself to in any other way. Be calm about your walking, or
whatever else you do."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account