SAFE, EASY WAYS OF REDUCING WEIGHT
In this chapter I shall try to answer that which I call “The Great
American Question.” In other countries where I have lived and visited,
women ask, “What shall I do to remain young?” In America women have
by their intelligence solved that problem. Here the torturing, ever
recurring question is, “What shall I do to be thin?”
Fat is the greatest foe to American beauty. But it is a self-created
foe. American women, learned in all other matters of personal hygiene,
ignore that which is chief, the hygiene of the table.
I will not say that American women overeat. They eat the wrong things.
In food they deal in extremes, which are always detrimental, whether to
beauty or to morals. They eat what is very sweet, or very sour. They
eat what is very cold or very hot. They eat foods that are too highly
spiced, or underdone. Extremes, always extremes! And when they have
had too much of this extreme food, and the tortured stomach revolts,
they go to another extreme, and fast, which is, in my opinion, a most
pernicious extreme.
One fact that the stout woman should keep ever before her mind, as a
signal light before a ship battling its way to port, is that fresh air
is a destructive agent to fat. Oxygen burns carbon. To make this clear,
let me ask you if you have noticed how a dying fire flames up when a
draught of cold air is turned upon it? That is precisely what happens
when a woman who is too fat goes out for a walk. Carbon, which is in
the great folds of flesh that lie upon her abdomen and blanket her
hips, is also a component part of the coat. Oxygen acts upon this as
a burning match applied to paper. Therefore, if you are stout, walk,
walk, walk.
This will not be easy. It will be hard indeed. For the woman who is
too fat is invariably ease and luxury loving and a long walk is to her
at first a hardship. But she should be in this as in all things else
discreet. Her first walk should be a short one. If she be one of those
women who always take a street car or a carriage, her first walk should
be only eight or ten blocks long. I am computing by short New York City
blocks. Twenty of these are equal to one mile. I have seen a woman
unaccustomed to walking come puffily into a room, drop into a chair
exhausted and say: “I am tired to death. I’ve walked eight blocks.”
But this woman persisted, or, rather, her friends persisted. They
insisted that after a few hours she take another walk. To their
pleasure she achieved this time ten blocks. In a walk the evening of
the same day she covered twelve, and came in with a pink glow in her
cheeks and a new light in her eyes. By the end of the week she could
walk one mile each morning without discomfort. The second week she
increased this to one and a half miles. The third week it became two
and when the second month of her exercise began she walked three miles
every morning and came home with heightened color, a diminished waist
and no complaints.
After two months her morning walk of five miles, regardless of weather,
had become a necessity of her health and spirits. It was amazing how,
as her girth decreased, her beauty increased. The cheeks that had been
heavy and flabby grew firm and rosy. At first, though there was a
perceptible decrease in her bulk, there was little difference in her
weight. Her waist measure decreased one and a half inches and her hip
measure two inches, yet she was but five pounds lighter. This apparent
riddle is, after all, easily guessed. Fat is of spongelike texture
and light weight. Much of it may disappear with little corresponding
reduction in weight. If a woman sees that her belts have become too
large and that she needs a dressmaker or tailor to take in her gowns
about the hips it does not matter whether she has lost five or twenty
pounds. She has accomplished that which she resolved to do. She has
grown beautifully less.
I have known women who never walked more than a few blocks at a time
accomplish a ten-mile walk in a morning. The wisdom of this I always
questioned. Walking is of no permanent value unless it is regularly
done. Better three miles every morning than ten miles twice a week.
Besides an exceedingly long walk is a severe tax upon muscles unused to
walking. The muscles must be treated gently as little children. They
should be slowly accustomed to their task.
Riding is an excellent reducing agent. A morning gallop in the park
or along country roads will soon diminish ponderous flesh. Golfing is
excellent. Swimming is admirable. Driving, because the body is entirely
passive, is of little use. Indoor exercise in a gymnasium is better,
much better, than nothing, but outdoor exercise distances it by one
hundred per cent. Although the windows of the room be opened wide the
room does not provide half the oxygen yielded by the great out-of-doors.
After the burning aid of fresh air, in importance comes diet. The stout
woman should try reducing the quantity of her food one-third, then
one-half. She should eliminate from it these dishes:
Pork, veal, beans, peas, fat beef or mutton, cauliflower, potatoes,
milk containing cream, puddings, pies, candy, sugar, white bread, eels,
salmon, chocolate, beets, butter, red wine, ice cream.
She should substitute for them:
Lean meats, eggs, green vegetables (as spinach, string beans,
asparagus, beet tops), oranges, whole wheat, graham or gluten bread,
white bread, toasted thin and crisp, saccharine instead of sugar, fresh
or dried fruits.
A famous woman rid herself of ten superfluous pounds in a month by a
modification of the milk diet. She drank two quarts of skimmed milk
a day, and ate but one meal. She dined at seven with her family. Her
breakfast and luncheon, consisted of two glasses of skimmed milk. She
sipped the milk, giving herself five minutes for each glass, for she
knew milk was rather a food than a beverage, and that since it passed
speedily into the consistency of cheese in the stomach it must be
slowly swallowed. The remainder of the two quarts of her daily stint
she sipped whenever hunger gnawed and she was tempted to return to her
old diet of what in America you call “three squares” a day.
Several of my friends have reduced their weight by the expedient of
taking a long walk, as long as their strength would permit, before
breakfast, but the nearly uncontrollable appetite for the deferred meal
created by this exercise is a discouraging element. Others have been
successful in reducing flesh by foregoing their breakfast altogether.
Many dieticians agree that breakfast is “the fattening meal.” And there
is reason to believe the stomach needs breakfast less than any other
meal, since there has been no special outlay of strength during the
night of rest as during the day of activity.
The fashionable woman used to think that she should rest immediately
after a meal. Now she walks slowly, or at least stands for twenty
minutes after each meal, being convinced that if she sits or lies
down after a meal her abdomen will become distended, one of the most
unsightly forms of superfluous flesh.
Massage and baths are an undoubted aid in the reduction of flesh.
Massage should not be made to take the place of exercise. It should
supplement it. It is estimated that thorough massage given by a
skillful operator is equivalent to a seven-mile walk. But if this be
true so far as the physical effort is concerned, there is no substitute
for the carbon destroying bath of oxygen.
No room can be so well ventilated as to approach the purity of the
outer air. The woman who is taking massage to reduce her flesh should
not rest afterward. The massage should be followed by a dip into a
bathtub of tepid water, a scrub and a salt rub, a cool spray and
dressing, calisthenics or a walk.
Do not allow your masseuse to use oil or cold cream. Talcum powder is
best for the woman who wants to be thin.
Reduction medicines I do not advise. Certainly I should never use one
of them internally without consulting a physician, and having the
compound analyzed. There are drastic remedies that reduce the flesh and
demoralize the digestive apparatus. Far better in this instance the ill
than the remedy and its consequent evils.
Some preparations of an absorbent nature I have known to be used with
good results. Most of these contain iodine. There are several soaps
used for the purpose of massage, all containing iodine. After receiving
my physician’s endorsement and having the soap analyzed by a scrupulous
chemist there would seem to be no danger attending their use.
This formula is safe, and if persistently used, should be effective
as an absorbent remedy. I have known corpulent beauties who took it
internally, but I should never be so daring:
Tincture of iodine, 30 minims; iodide of potassium, 60 grains;
hyposulphite soda, 20 grains; distilled water, 7 ounces; aniseed water,
170 minims.
I have before recommended Turkish baths for flesh reduction. That
advice I must qualify by explaining how they should be taken, for there
are thin women who take Turkish baths to fatten them, and with success.
As a reducing agent the Turkish bath should be taken in a more radical
way than for mere cleansing and tonic action. The bather should
remain in the room as long as possible, that is until she is warned
by faintness or a fluttering of the heart that she has been in the
abnormal temperature long enough. These warnings she must instantly
heed. The length of time is governed by her temperament and health. It
may be twenty minutes, but it should be from half to three-quarters
of an hour. After the scrub and massage that follow she should go
instantly to a couch and be wrapped in many blankets, so that the flow
of perspiration will continue. Thus while she is resting she should
perspire for another half hour. This makes a drainage at the pores for
between one and two hours and reduces materially the weight. But I
do not advise Turkish baths oftener than twice a week at most. Taken
oftener I believe them to be weakening.
A cool or cold plunge every morning is prescribed by some beauty
experts. Personally I am opposed to them. They are not cleansing. The
delicate person cannot withstand them. They are a tonic to the robust
constitution, that does not require them.
A gentle laxative is a great aid in reducing. Various salts, with
the consent of your physician and taken in a manner he advises,
would be helpful in diminishing flesh. But I insist that whatever
is done in this direction must have a physician’s approval. I will
not unqualifiedly recommend it. The tendency of salts is to render a
person who takes them anæmic. Should the person who wishes to reduce be
already anæmic the effect of the salts, in thinning the blood, might be
injurious.
To summarize my advice upon the matter of reducing flesh, let me say
that the simplest methods are the best.
Make oxygen your first aid. Spend at least two hours a day out of
doors. The more active the outdoor exercise the better, stopping this
side the point of exhaustion.
Reduce the amount of food one-half, and change the dietary from the fat
producing foods to bone and muscle makers.
And, in conclusion, a warning. As the muscles, divested of blanketing
flesh, seem to shrink, be sure that the skin follows them, instead of
hanging baggily about them, in ugly wrinkles or creases.
To contract the skin that surrounds the diminished muscles bathe it
frequently in cold water. Bathe with a sponge dipped in cold water, or
wrap the parts about with cold compresses.
If this method, which is called “freezing the muscles,” is not
successful this astringent cream applied every morning and evening
should be:
Glycerine, 5 ounces; mutton tallow, 1 pound; tincture of benzoin, 2
drams; spirits of camphor, 1 dram; powdered alum, ½ dram; orange flower
water, 2 ounces; Russian isinglass, 1 dram.
One day not long ago a charming young woman came to see me. Her face
indicated deep distress.
“You are looking charming,” I assured her.
“No, no, madam,” she returned. “I am looking wretched, dreadful. I am
positively ashamed of myself.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Don’t you see? I am over weight. I am twenty-seven. My height is five
feet three inches. I weigh one hundred and sixty-five pounds.”
“Your curves are a bit ample,” I admitted.
“You know very well, dear madam, that I am like a pillow of feathers.
I lived at a summer hotel where they had really good food, and behold
me. I can hardly believe that I gained thirty pounds in six weeks. What
shall I do?”
“First understand that you cannot lose the flesh much faster than you
gained it. You will need at least a month to lose the thirty pounds.”
“But I must lose them, madam. Think of appearing in the opera like
this? Think of dancing, not only with a man, but with thirty extra
pounds. What shall I do?”
I repeated the litany of reduction: “Exercise, diet, abstinence,
perspiration.”
“But how?”
“Exercise until you are tired, and then don’t rest but exercise some
more. Rest from one kind of exercise by trying another.”
“What exercise?” persisted my too plump friend.
“First a series of exercises that force you to breathe deeply. Begin
as soon as you rise in the morning, and, by the way, rise at least an
hour earlier than usual. You fatten as much by too much sleep as from
too much food. In your night robe, or if you prefer it, in a bathing
or gymnasium suit, go to the window, fling it wide open, and standing
with the arms raised above your head, palms outward, elbows straight,
inhale deeply and slowly, counting eight. Hold the air while you count
eight. This gives the air a chance to sweep through the air cells of
the lungs, bathing them with its freshness. Then expel the air slowly
while you count eight. Repeat this until a slight dizziness warns you
that you have done enough.
“Then begin the bending exercises. With fingers extended bend slowly
until the finger tips reach the floor. Then rise slowly, and raise
the arms above the head. Do not raise the shoulders, but slowly bring
the tips of the fingers together above the head. Then gradually bend
forward until the tips of the fingers reach the floor. Then back and up
again.
“This exercise is difficult, especially for the stout. But persist in
it and it will reduce the overfatness of the abdomen.
“You will be tired by this time, but you must not encourage the feeling
of drowsiness and torpor and disinclination for further effort that
creeps over you. Banish all thoughts of going back to bed. Instead
begin your rolling.
“There is no mystery about rolling. It is simply what the name
indicates. Down upon the floor you go and roll over and over swiftly,
not slowly as a porpoise rolls. The porpoise, you will observe, is not
a slender animal. Roll over as a puppy, tingling with the joy of life,
rolls in the dust when at play. Roll quickly. Make at least eighty
revolutions before stopping. Now you are very tired. The unaccustomed
perspiration appears upon your face and body in drops. That is good. To
reduce weight you must perspire. Most fat people have lost the art of
perspiring.
“But you have not finished your exercise. Don’t think of breakfast.
Don’t think of a nap after your strenuous half hour. Get a skipping
rope and go out on the roof, on the fire escape, or into a vacant
room and jump the rope twenty-five times. This the first morning. The
second morning make it fifty and continue increasing the number until a
flutter at your heart hints that you have taken enough of this exercise
for the present.
“Then try some new dance steps. If you have done these thoroughly you
will have spent an hour and a quarter at reduction. Go then to your
bathroom and take a shower, first warm, then cool, then gradually
becoming cold. With a big Turkish towel rub yourself thoroughly dry.
Come back in a week and tell me how much you weigh.”
“One hundred sixty-one,” she said. “But that is not enough.”
“It is not,” I answered. “We must do better. This week, after you have
finished your exercises indoors, you must dress at once and go for a
long walk or ride.”
“But breakfast?” she asked faintly.
“It would be better if you ate no breakfast,” I answered sternly. “Or,
if you take any, let it be a glassful or, if your stomach is clamorous,
two glassfuls of buttermilk. Drink them slowly, taking at least five
minutes for each glass.
“When you return from the walk or ride take another shower.”
“And rest?”
“There is no rest for the person who is reducing. It is an occupation
in itself. After your luncheon, which should be of lean meat or fish,
toast and coffee without cream or sugar and stewed or fresh fruit,
go out again. Go shopping or calling. If calling, decline tea and
sweetmeats that may be offered you. If shopping or calling don’t drive
to your destination. Walk. For dinner you should have the same as at
luncheon, with the addition, if you wish, of a small glass of white
wine. White wine, being sour, is one of the agents for reducing flesh
that all French dietitians prescribe. After dinner more exercise in the
open. Driving is better than staying indoors, but walking is better.
I have before pointed out that in walking you take in four times as
much fresh air in a given time as you do in driving. And fresh air in
the body is like a draught of air in a furnace, fanning a blaze that
consumes all refuse and slag. Go back now,” I said, “and call again
next week.”
Next week her step was lighter. Her eyes were brighter. She said: “You
are a hard taskmistress, but I have done as you advised. My weight is
now 154 pounds.”
“You have lost a pound a day,” I said. “That is enough. Some
authorities would say it is too much. Now we will vary the treatment a
little. I have told you about exercise and diet. Now as to abstinence.”
“It is dreadfully hard to do without sweets,” she sighed.
“Did you do without them?”
“Not wholly,” she admitted.
“If the hunger for sweets seizes you let fruit tablets dissolve in your
mouth and swallow them slowly. This will satisfy for a time the craving
for sweets that is as tormenting in its way as the craving for drink,
and as hard to cure. The fruit tablets are a make-believe candy, and
yet are so largely fruit and water that the sugar in them is hardly a
calculable quantity.”
“But I am hungry nearly all the time; hungry for other than sweets.
Hungry for substantials.”
“If you insist upon eating as much as you wish I can do nothing for
you. You must leave the table with your appetite unappeased.
“Drink a great deal of water. That refreshes the body, but helps to
destroy the appetite for food. Normally, you should drink ten glasses
a day. Increase the amount to twelve or fourteen. With your buttermilk
for breakfast, your lean meat, dry toast and coffee at luncheon and the
same with white wine at night, your stomach will be satisfied.
“But do your water drinking discreetly. Begin in the morning as soon as
you rise by sipping two glassfuls. Finish the day by the same quantity.
The other should be drunk between meals or, at most, one glass should
be drunk a day.
“Keep before your mind the word ‘Abstain.’ Remember that you must
abstain from sweets, from pastries, from milk, from cauliflower,
potatoes, lima beans, corn, all the vegetables and cereals that fatten.”
At the end of the third week she came back perceptibly lessened. “Eight
pounds less this week,” she said triumphantly. “My weight is now one
hundred and forty-six. Only eleven pounds of the thirty remain.”
“Do you perspire well?”
“Better than I did. But not freely.”
“Then the pores must be educated. Some pores must go to school to
learn their function. When all else fails a course of Turkish or
Russian baths will do this. Take them at home in a cabinet, or at
public baths, as you prefer. I prefer the Russian baths because they
are moist and they do not force the lungs to breathe hot air. The
cabinet baths permit an opening for the head so that while the body is
perspiring the lungs may be inhaling cool, pure air.
“Take one of these baths every morning. Keeping the feet in hot water
facilitates the perspiration. At the end of a week you will find that
the pores will have learned their office and perspiring will have
become easy. While you are taking the course of baths you may relax
somewhat from the exercise. Or you may take instead deep or kneading
massage, the sort in which your masseuse’s knuckles seem to reach the
bones.”
At the end of the week my patient wrote me: “I cannot call to-day, but
rejoice with me. I have lost eight pounds this week. Only three more to
spare. I am keeping tailors and dressmakers busy taking in my frocks.”
Three days later she appeared, looking radiant. It was as though a half
dozen blankets that hid her beauty had been removed. Her charms had
been hidden by too much flesh, as the flame of a lamp is obscured by a
soiled chimney.
“One thing I forget,” I said, anxiously scrutinizing her face for
sagging skin. “But you do not need the warning.”
“No, I had a facial massage every day to keep the skin of my face firm.”
“And there is no sign of a pendulous chin,” I said, admiringly.
“I kept the chin firm by freezing the muscles into hardness with cold
water compresses and applications of ice.”
Here is how another young friend of mine lost nineteen pounds in five
weeks without injury to her health.
Before she fairly realized that she was putting on flesh she found
herself with all the symptoms of overweight. Her face was full and
puffy. Her cheek muscles sagged, giving her face the jowl-like look
that suggests the lower animals, transforming beauty’s face into a
beastlike semblance, and that beast not the handsomest, nor most
poetic, of the order. As she surveyed her figure in the mirror,
particularly in the back, it looked broad and coarse. Moreover, she
was conscious of her weight. Her movements had become clumsy. When we
are at normal weight, that is, when we are only so heavy as nature
intended, and nature abhors overfleshed women, we are not oppressed by
our bodies. We feel so light and our minds are so capable of dominating
our bodies that we scarcely realize that we have any weight. That
birdlike lightness of body is a sure sign that we are at our best.
My friend, having a long social season before her, when she wished to
look her best, resolved to train down. But how? She adopted none of the
cure-alls prescribed by stout women we meet at Turkish baths. She did
what is the wisest course when we are able to adopt it, went straight
to her physician and asked his advice.
This was wise because her physician knew her constitution as she knew
her alphabet. He knew which way lay peril. She must not take the beef
and hot water cure, because she was predisposed to rheumatism, and
authorities claimed, and this physician believed, that in beef there
is at least seventeen per cent. of uric acid. The body is able to
eliminate only a limited amount of the acid and the introduction into
it of such excess over that amount would involve some remaining in the
system. This should be avoided in cases of what the physicians call
“uric acid diathesis.”
Also his patient was nervous, so he must not permit her that starvation
system of diet which reduced her nervous force. Not being an especially
vigorous woman, he was unwilling to run any risk of impairing her
vitality.
Under his guidance, then, she began this regimen:
For breakfast, two slices of thin, dry toast. If her breakfast
satisfied her cravings he insisted that the bread be dry. If not, she
spread it very thinly with butter. With this she ate one medium-boiled
or poached egg and drank one cup of coffee.
Being of those who say, and prove, if you watch them at the first meal
of the day, “My breakfast is my best meal,” her physician knew that
this light breakfast would at first be a hardship. He therefore urged
her to eat very slowly, masticating her food until it turned into a
thin liquid in her mouth. “If you do this,” he said, “one-half the food
you formerly ate will just as fully satisfy your hunger.” “And that,
which I didn’t at all believe at first I found to be quite true,” she
said.
The only luncheon permitted her was a slight one of fruit. “Try to
get on with one apple or orange,” he said. “If you are suffering from
hunger eat two. But masticate, masticate, masticate.”
At night she was allowed to eat anything she chose, except the three
fattening “ps”--potatoes, pudding or pie. But again she was charged to
take twice as much time as usual for the meal. And at neither of her
meals should she drink water. At breakfast and dinner one cup of black
coffee was permitted.
For all the days that followed, for five weeks, she had the same
breakfast and luncheon, but every other night she had no dinner save
a large bowl of bread and milk. The milk contained no cream, but was
skimmed.
Meanwhile she, who had always disliked exercise, discarded her carriage
and took two walks a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Her physician named no ground to be covered in these walks.
“Walk as long as you enjoy it, but not until you are tired,” he warned
her. Her first unaccustomed walks were only three or four short city
squares, but after two weeks, when nature had become accustomed to the
new regimen, she was able to walk four miles a day, two before and two
after noon.
If, as sometimes happened, she returned from her walk faint, she was
allowed to drink a cup of hot but very weak tea, and if nature seemed
to demand more sustenance, she drank two cups. But from these cream and
sugar were sternly prohibited.
The results I have told you. And my friend never looked so lovely and
she assures me she has never felt so well. There was no expensive
journey nor stay at the baths; no daily massage. The loss of those
nineteen pounds cost her only self-denial, the one fee for her
physician and the tailor’s charges for taking in all her gowns four
inches about the hips and two at the waist.
While ways to grow thin do not especially interest me, I cannot help
hearing continually of them. Wherever I go the conversation of the
women I meet tends to fat. All are interested because those who are fat
wish to be thin, and those who are thin fear they may become fat. All
womankind, it would seem, has organized into an army of fat fighters.
To the baths go women who weigh two hundred pounds, and when they
return from Carlsbad, from Marienbad and elsewhere I pass them in the
Bois without saluting them, because in those six weeks they have lost
fifty pounds and are thin beyond recognition. It is marvelous. One of
the great physicians who crossed the Atlantic recently to treat a New
York society leader for obesity, received $2,000 for his services for
two weeks. They will do much and pay greatly to reduce their flesh,
these rich, but what of us who are not wealthy?
We can choose and follow some of their methods once we have learned
them. This is one method which a friend of mine uses to keep her
weight thirty-five pounds below what it formerly was. It is simple,
being baths three times a week in hot salt water. Into an ordinary bath
tub she empties two pounds of table salt. She pours water into the tub
until it is two-thirds full, and remains in the tub for twenty minutes.
After this she rubs her body briskly down with alcohol and retires.
Like most methods of quick reduction this may be criticised as
temporarily weakening. Therefore while I am acquainting you with this
treatment for obesity I do not recommend it to one who must keep her
strength at its fullest. A vacation or a time when your tasks, whether
they be business or professional or social, are light, would be the
best time for this measure for reduction of weight.
From the harem of Constantinople, through an escaped inmate, comes the
news that when a member of it becomes so fat that she is a formless sea
of flesh, the overlord orders that she have bone-deep massage daily
with this lotion:
Iodide of potassium, 2 ounces; camphor water, 2 ounces; alcohol, 2
ounces.
If while this deep massage and the hardship for a woman of the harem of
eating no more of the delicious Turkish paste are continuing her face
grows haggard and lines appear in it, it is bathed six times a day with:
Witch hazel, 1 ounce; rosewater, 1 ounce.
Specialists are always prepared to hear the complaint: “I don’t eat
much.” All their patients tell them this and all of them believe it
to be true, but in nearly every case it isn’t. A few admit that they
are enormous feeders, but say “It is impossible for me to control my
appetite.” A beauty specialist I know laughs at this.
“When you are hungry between the two meals I will permit you to drink
water,” he orders. “Hot water or cold as you like, but drink it very
slowly, and never take a glass of water unless there is the juice of
a lemon in it. If you keep the stomach filled with water you will be
less hungry. If you feel a ‘gnawing’ drink more water.”
This is the dietary permitted by an autocrat at one of the great
European baths:
No liquor; all fish, except trout and salmon; chicken; beef (in very
small and rare portions, preferably raw); eggs; nuts; all acid fruits
such as cranberries, cherries, peaches and blackberries; rhubarb;
beans; carrots; cabbage; cauliflower; asparagus; squash; tomatoes;
onions; lettuce; celery; hominy; brown or rye bread; Dutch cheese.
These and nothing more composed the food. No servant could be bribed
for a potato, and all turned round eyes of innocent wonder upon you if
you asked for a sweet cake.
Because the change to this diet was so radical the doctor did not
insist upon violent exercise, but he kept his reducing patients out of
doors and encouraged them, as did the Paris physician, to keep moving.
While you are reducing depend upon a tape measure rather than the
scales to determine your loss of weight. Measure your hips and waist
and upper arm. Fat is bulk making, but it takes a large amount of it to
weigh a pound. A woman, my neighbor at the baths I visited, had lost
three inches about the hips and two about the waist, yet had lost only
three-quarters of a pound in weight.
If I were ever encumbered by too much flesh I should first give the
rice treatment a thorough trial. It is simple and cheap and has the
merit of not reducing too rapidly, so that the facial muscles have time
to adjust themselves to the new conditions and the skin of the face
to also adjust itself, preventing the haggardness and aged look that
follow too rapid reduction.
The rice cure can be explained in a paragraph, a short one, even in a
line. It consists in an exclusive diet of rice and milk, or rice with a
little butter and salt to make it palatable. It is a leisurely, and for
that reason healthful, treatment. A young woman of my acquaintance rid
herself of two pounds a week by this diet until she had diminished her
weight by the desired ten pounds. I have no doubt, had she continued,
she could have reduced indefinitely by that scale. She ate three large
bowls of rice a day. Each bowl constituted one of her three daily
meals. The rice was covered with skim milk. Had she chosen, she could
have eaten it with a little butter and salt.
A fad in Ostend and at some of the German cures is to wrap the limbs
and other fatty portions in white muslin or linen cloths that have
been boiled in vinegar. They are wrapped around the fleshy portions
of the body as hot as the cloths can be endured. When they cool they
are replaced by others or they are dipped once more into the vinegar.
This treatment is continued for at least twenty minutes and some of the
faddists employ it three times a day. It has a certain value, for there
is no question about the absorptive power of the skin. But its foes are
sure that it makes the skin yellow.
In Germany is being attempted a method that would make for health and
healthy thinness in America. German physicians advise the establishment
in each town of fruit depots. If these depots or rooms were generally
established and a man or woman could drop in at one of them for
luncheon as easily as he or she now calls at a restaurant where
fattening potatoes, puddings, pastry and liquors are served there would
be a benefit to the general health.
Summer is the best season for reduction, for three reasons. First, one
of the greatest agents for destroying excess flesh is pure air, and one
may get all she wishes of it at this season. If circumstances permit
you to leave the cities, the country air will aid in diminishing your
girth.
A second reason why summer is the best season for reduction of weight
is that we need and crave less food in this season, and, besides, the
food is of a lighter nature and contains more acid than in winter.
One fashionable Parisienne betook herself to her château last month for
her annual rebuilding and for the first three weeks lived exclusively
on grapes and slept in an open air chamber on the roof of her country
home. She grew clear of skin and lissome as a girl.
A third reason for utilizing summer in your reduction treatment is that
it is the season which favors perspiration. And fat flows from our body
on the streams of perspiration.
The latest word in the matter of obesity cures is that fat being
composed chiefly of water must be squeezed as a sponge is to rid it of
the liquid with which it is saturated.
Whenever there is need a supply soon follows. A school of masseuses
have adopted this theory of fat and have gone to work heroically to
prove their theory. One of these, who has gone to your country from
Sweden, gives the new massage for three hours at one treatment. She
beats and pounds and squeezes the flesh until it is soft as putty.
The results are amazing. I know an actress who in order to play a
vampire woman must needs reduce thirty pounds. This she did last
summer, becoming slender and straight as a young pine tree, and with no
lessening of her vitality or beauty.
In London they are “jumping the fat down.” Once a day, or oftener, the
overweight clan jump up and down fifty times.
In Paris the so-called electric blanket has many advocates and friends.
The person who desires to reduce her flesh wraps this blanket about
her, attaches to its fastenings the electrical power from the lights in
her room, and presently she is dripping with perspiration. Completely
relaxed as in a Turkish bath, she lies in her own room, on her own
bed, and loses undesired ounces and pounds. After twenty minutes or
more she springs from her blanket, hurries to her bathroom and turns
on the cold spray or shower, or takes a plunge in a tub of cold water.
This, done twice a day, has been the secret of the vanishing flesh of
many beauties at Ostend, who had the gratification of remaining in
fashionable centers and enjoying life, instead of immuring themselves
at stupid baths.
These are effective new methods for general reduction. Often, however,
there is need only of reducing certain portions of the body that
are too redundant. Many women are annoyed, especially when they
wear evening dress, by an unbecoming roll of fat lying between the
shoulders. This has been removed by the simple means of patting it
briskly with first one hand, then another, afterwards by stroking
it, first with one hand, then the other, the strokes being firm and
downward ones. It is better, still, to dip the palms in cold water
before beginning this manipulation. “Ironing” the flesh roll with a
lump of ice is another method successful in several instances of which
I have personal knowledge.
If the chin has begun to multiply the ice ironing is useful, especially
if the ironing be followed at night by tying up the chin by a muslin or
rubber bandage that is fastened about the head.
Sometimes the excess of fat is in the face, giving the countenance
a gross look, robbing it of much of its apparent intelligence, and
muffling fine features in a blanket of superfluous flesh. Such a face
has rid itself of this incubus, and emerged, youthful, rosy and well
proportioned, because, as its owner whispered to me, she never retires
without first passing a small lump of ice over her face, always with
upward strokes. If the touch of the ice is unpleasant, or if there is
in your composition a tendency to neuralgia, wrap the ice in a thin
layer of absorbent cotton, or in a piece of gauze or cheesecloth.
Individual treatment for overweight can be treated according to
individual needs. Study your needs and adapt your knowledge to them.
Keep in mind these four principles of flesh reduction. All methods
depend upon increased perspiration, lessened quantity or different
quality of food, more vigorous exercise or that which reacts upon
certain portions of the body, or greater freedom from clogging
materials which are wastes of the body. Those bath powders which are
advertised as reducing agents usually contain one of the salts which
induce the latter results.