The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-CureDewey, Edward Hooker
Science
The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
Dewey, Edward Hooker
Fasting; Nutrition
As a general fact, the No-breakfast Plan has been attended by a highly
satisfactory reduction of surplus pounds; where there has been a failure
it has been due to such an increase of digestive power as really to add
to both an increase of the average amount of daily food and of power to
digest it. For instance, one of my fellow citizens, weighing not less
than three hundred and thirty pounds some years ago, gave up his morning
meals. This was attended with entire relief from frequent bilious
spells; but the average of daily food was increased and the business of
a barber did not add anything to muscle development. Finally from mere
excess of weight he became a prisoner to his house and yard, unable to
walk a square without the greatest difficulty; and yet there were two
enormous meals put into a stomach daily that did not complain, and the
weight increased until the three hundred and seventy-five pound notch
was nearly reached. He heard about the Rathbun fast, and I was able to
persuade him to come down to one light meal daily, and day after day
bonds were loosened. After a year there have been nearly seventy-five
pounds lost, and there is ability to labor and to walk several miles
daily.
Very many thin persons have gained as high as forty pounds by reason of
the larger degree of muscle exercise. Since last writing, this word has
come from Miss K., who one year ago was at the asylum eating several
meals a day in bed with suicidal intent. She left that bed with a weight
of one hundred and forty pounds, and, as I have mentioned before, lost
twenty pounds of it by her fast. My last news is from a letter written
the day after a twenty-five-mile ride among the mountains with a soul as
free and joyous as there are freedom and joy with the birds whose songs
greeted her rapt ears from every treetop. She writes of a gain of
twenty-four pounds since the fast, and states that the glasses she has
worn for thirteen years are wanted no longer!
I feel that I need not multiply words as to the ability and utility of
bringing all overweight down to the physiological normal and of keeping
it there. I could fill hundreds of pages with the joyous testimonies of
those who have been relieved of many surplus pounds, with numerous
accompanying ailings; they all tell the same story, and I will only add
this, that there is no physiological excuse for any mortal to carry
around weight that disables.
Not very many months ago ex-Governor Flower, of New York, a statesman of
national fame, a man of largest public spirit, a most valuable citizen,
and Colonel Robert Ingersoll, an orator of world-wide fame and of great
nobility of soul, dropped as beeves beneath the stroke of an ax because
of a fracture of brittle bloodvessels. In both of these cases not many
less pounds than a hundred had needlessly accumulated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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