HOW TO GAIN FLESH
Every woman, while not desiring to be fat, wants to possess a figure
that is pleasantly rounded. Curves, for women at least, are the lines
of beauty. A man who is all straight lines may be handsome, but no
woman who is all angles may be beautiful.
The young women, and the older women, too, who ask me, “What shall I
do to become pleasingly plump?” are wise. For womanly lines, like a
womanly voice, are wholly desirable.
How shall the thin woman become plump? It is a harder problem than that
which I tried to solve last week. For a woman who is fat may become
comparatively thin by self-denial, but the thin woman who would become
plump must overcome many things, heredity, temperament, some of the
most salient traits of her character. The thin woman must make herself
over inside, so to speak, before she can make herself over outside.
To be pleasingly plump means that every angle is covered to an
attractive roundness without any of the grossness of the figure that is
too fat. As an example of such a figure, let me call your attention to
Mary Garden. No one would dare say she is fat. She is not. She never
will be, for she has the nervous temperament. But in all her figure
there is no angle. Yet its lines are long, the curves graceful, and the
ensemble is most individual.
For the thin woman who would become plump there must be a radical
change in her manner of living. First she must learn a lesson from
her fat sister. It is not to worry. Almost always the fat woman is
care free. She is amiable. She never worries and never nags. Diane
de Poiters, the great French beauty, had to struggle against the
encroachment of a sea of fat. The reason may be found in her answer
to the question: “Why are you so beautiful?” Her reply was: “I am
beautiful because I never worry.” The thin woman must stop worrying.
The thin woman is a spendthrift of vitality. She is never still when
there is a chance for activity. It was of such a woman that the
sardonic bachelor says: “She cuts up quilt pieces just for the fun of
sewing them together again.” By which the bachelor meant to convey that
she did needless work. The thin woman must learn to rest.
The woman who is too slender to please herself or others must look
to her diet. Those foods which her fat sister must eschew she must
habitually eat.
She, too, must have her daily baths and her massage, but they must be
radically different from those taken by the woman who would diminish
her flesh.
Since her greatest hope of increased flesh lies in food I will first
discuss that. Here is a list of those edibles which contain the starch
or sugar, or both, that are needful for the taking on of flesh:
Thick soups, as bisque, cream of celery, cream of corn, puree of peas
and puree of beans; fat beef, fat mutton, hot corn bread, hot biscuits,
wheat, corn and buckwheat cakes, plenty of butter, honey; salad
dressings in which there is more oil than vinegar; chocolate, pastries,
puddings, bonbons, bananas, peaches, prunes, beans, peas, cauliflower,
asparagus, potatoes, rice, gelatines.
She should drink cocoa or chocolate made with milk; red wines if wines
be drunk at all; tea or coffee, if drunk at all, must be taken with
cream and sugar. She should drink more hot water than cold.
Cold baths I do not recommend for any woman. Her organism is too
delicate, I think, to successfully resist the shock of a cold plunge or
shower, but if any woman can withstand it it is the stout woman. It has
been claimed to be a considerable aid in reduction of flesh. By that
token, if by no other, the thin woman should avoid them. Her baths must
be at least tepid. I should advise them as warm as she can comfortably
take them. For while hot baths are enervating a moderately warm bath is
soothing to tired nerves, and so tends to those easeful habits which
the thin woman needs to acquire. The fat woman should rise immediately
from her bath, dress and go about her affairs. But it is admissible,
even desirable, for the thin woman to lie down for a rest of twenty
minutes or longer after her bath. The repose that follows a warm bath
is one of the best aids to gaining flesh.
A Turkish bath once a week may be taken, but it should be taken
prudently or it will lessen the flesh. The thin woman should not
remain in the hot room for more than ten minutes. After the scrub
which follows she should not lie in blankets, as I have advised fat
women to do, to promote further perspiration. Instead she should go
to a slightly cooler room and there take massage while her pores are
gaping as open hungry mouths to receive it. Massage with olive oil is a
fattener. For each bath I recommend:
Olive oil, 1 gill; oil of bergamot, ½ teaspoonful.
After massage with the oil she should rest for a half hour before
dressing. To remove the odor and other unpleasant souvenirs of the oil
rub she should powder her body freely with talcum before dressing.
For those to whom olive oil is distasteful there is this massage for
the meager body, which is much used in France and Germany: Tannin, ½
gram; lanolin, 30 grams; oil of sweet almonds, 10 grams.
This, which I have before recommended for building the adipose tissues
of the neck, is excellent for the body, especially for the sunken
regions about the collarbones, for the thin layer of flesh over the
ribs and for enlarging the hips:
Cocoa butter, 100 grams; alcohol, 95 per cent., 20 grams; essence of
rosemary, 12 drops; essence of bergamot, 12 drops.
Some skins are irritated by cocoa butter. For these pure, fresh lard
could be substituted. A recipe somewhat difficult to fill this side of
Paris, but which has been invaluable to thin women who desired to be
plump, is this for massage cream:
Salep of Persia, 15 grams; powdered cocoa, 60 grams; glan doux d’Asie,
60 grams; potato starch, 45 grams; rice starch, 60 grams; thin gelatine
solution, 250 grams; vanilla, 5 centigrams.
Another simple, pleasant and efficacious massage cream is made from:
Olive oil, 2 ounces; pure starch, 1 ounce; lanolin, 1 ounce.
While I am aware that in America there is a prejudice against perfumes,
I cannot share in it. Since the days of the early Romans well chosen
perfumes have added elegance to a toilet. It is only their abuse which
is to be deplored. A dainty woman need not be told that she must
use the perfume sparingly, that there should be a hint, not a bald
statement, of them about her. But there is no question that certain
perfumes have also a tonic medicinal effect. Therefore for the thin
woman whose nerves require soothing I recommend this toilet water, used
by English and French women when tired. A half dozen drops in a bowl of
water is deliciously soothing, and leaves a pleasantly pervasive yet
elusive perfume in the room:
Jasmine water, 3 ounces; vanilla water, 1½ ounces; acacia water,
1½ ounces; tuberose water, ½ ounce; essence of ambergris, 5 drops;
tincture of benzoin, ½ dram.
The thin woman may use all of these things and yet note but little
improvement. For she has but little appetite as a rule, and it is hard
to fatten one who will not eat. She should go to a physician, tell him
of her loss of appetite, and ask for a prescription for a tonic which
shall be, as are most tonics, an appetizer. In lieu of that I borrow
from a famous French physician, who contributed much to the beauty of
women, this formula for an appetizer:
Tincture of nux vomica, 3 grams; tincture of rhubarb, 60 grams;
tincture of star anise, 3 grams.
The woman who would be plump must add to her daily allowance of sleep.
If she sleeps eight hours and is still thin she should sleep nine
hours, or even ten. And she should take a nap of a half hour to an hour
after her midday meal. She should exercise before instead of after
meals.
Briefly this is the regimen I should advise for thin women:
Begin the day with a light breakfast in bed. The breakfast may be a pot
of cocoa or chocolate made with milk, and sweetened with three lumps of
sugar in each cup, three slices buttered toast, two medium boiled eggs.
Rest for at least a half hour; better an hour. The time can be utilized
in looking after your correspondence on one of the convenient writing
pads, in bed, in reading the morning papers or in making your plans for
the day.
Then a tepid bath, as I have directed, followed by a slightly cooler
shower to prevent your catching cold.
Then a short walk or a drive.
Luncheon of roast beef or mutton with gravy, any green salad with
mayonnaise dressing, a cup of cocoa or glass of milk, bananas or
peaches or pastry.
Between luncheon and dinner sip two or three glasses of milk,
remembering that milk is food rather than drink, and giving five
minutes to each glass. Follow the luncheon by a nap. If you can’t sleep
at least rest.
For dinner eat any food that appeals to you that is of starchy or
sugary or fatty nature. Avoid pickles, oranges and all acids.
In this diet use saving common sense. Do not eat of rich foods so
freely that your digestion will be impaired and your complexion become
mottled. Drive away insomnia by drinking a glass of warmed milk, a cup
of cocoa or chocolate and eating a biscuit or two before retiring.
For the thin woman the rule against eating between meals applied to the
fat one does not hold. She may eat whenever hunger moves her, for hers
is a normal hunger, indicating need of more nutriment.
I think it is not well to try to guide the natural growth of a young
girl toward slenderness or plumpness. Nature should have its chance to
indicate rather strongly which way it intends her to travel, whether
the road of thinness or fat. When this has become apparent, which is
not until after sixteen or eighteen, it is quite time to supplement
nature.
But for those readers whose growth will not be interrupted by any
radical changes in manner of living, I would advise special attention
to diet. Give a great deal of intelligent attention to nourishing the
body. Keep in mind always the class of foods that form flesh.
Of the cereals corn, wheat and oats belong in this class. The bread
made from them has the same properties, especially if they are used in
their natural, unadulterated state. Corn bread, made from rough yellow
meal and spread plentifully with butter, is one of the best means of
adding to the weight of the body. Potatoes, if used in connection with
eggs, cheese and milk are important aids in that direction.
A French physician of unusual skill prepares to fatten his thin
patients by requiring them first to fast for a short time. Sometimes
he asks that this continue for three days, though in my opinion
forty-eight hours are quite enough. This is to clear the body of all
remnants of former manner of diet. This is followed in his system by
an exclusive milk diet of three more days, he permitting the patient
to drink as much as she likes, but insisting on at least two quarts a
day, drunk very slowly, ten minutes for the consumption of each glass,
almost literally eating, rather than drinking it.
Should the appetite rebel at the milk it may be varied by an occasional
glass of orange juice or of lemon juice and water, half and half.
The third step in this rejuvenating of the body before beginning to
take the flesh forming foods, is to eat nuts and fruit freely for a day
or two or longer, unless your appetite becomes too rebellious.
When you have begun with the flesh forming foods, which I have given
and which always include meats containing considerable fat, be careful
to chew them so thoroughly that all turn to liquid form in your mouth
before swallowing.
I knew a woman once, extremely thin, who always ate a half dozen dates
for dessert, after a full meal. To this she ascribed her rapid gain in
welcome flesh.
Exercise gently while building flesh, but do not exercise quickly nor
long at a time.
Drink water freely, and during meals one glass slowly drunk of cold
water will not interfere with, but rather aid, in the digestion. One of
the first measures taken by those who wish to reduce their flesh is the
opposite--to avoid drinking water at meals.
Rest often. Sleep as much as you can, taking a nap at midday if
possible. Thin persons are nearly all worriers. Fat persons, as a rule,
do not worry.
Massaging the body with olive oil or vaseline aids in flesh formation.
Drinking olive oil has the same result.
My prescription for the increase of flesh is twofold. I counsel peace
of mind and eating flesh-making foods.
Generally speaking, thin persons are of nervous temperament. They have
a positive genius for worry. Stop worrying and control your nerves.
This can be done through the practice of common sense and the exercise
of your will. Train yourself along this line and it will amaze you to
see what progress you have made in a few months. It is possible not to
let things and persons get on your nerves. Try it, and keep on trying,
until the avoidance becomes a habit.
You will be less nervous if you take more rest. Sleep; or if you can’t
sleep, remain in bed an extra hour or two, if possible, every night.
And if your circumstances permit, take a nap or a half-hour or more of
relaxation at noon. Rest after meals.
Aside from this nerve control and banishment of worry, the greatest aid
in flesh-making is in the greater quantity and different quality of
food.
Science has lately contributed a valuable item to the flesh-making
foods. The pine nut, known as pignolia, is one of the foods richest in
fatty matter and in fat-making ingredients. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the
great food expert and advocate of the pure food law, calls attention
to the fact that these small, sleek, white nuts are composed of nearly
60 per cent. of fat, and that the sugar and starch, also fat-making
ingredients, in them amount to 17 per cent. of their composition. They
have heat-making properties equaling those of butter, containing nearly
four times as much nourishment as lean beef. This discovery I repeat,
hoping that those persons to whom the idea of eating pork or fatty beef
will be obnoxious will find an excellent substitute in this.
Butter is a fattening agent. Spread bread thickly with this and eat
foods cooked in it, if you would grow flesh. But because butter and cod
liver oil are believed to interfere in some cases with digestion, I
would advise the free use of cream and milk instead.
As a rule the person who is too thin is anæmic, and those foods which
rebuild the system will tend to round the body. For such persons thick
soups are desirable. Thick broths are strengthening and rebuilding.
Vermicelli and macaroni, added to thick soups, tends to fatten. In
Germany I came on an anæmic young woman taking the cure at one of the
baths.
“What is that you are eating?” I inquired, looking dubiously at a thick
sandwich she ate with evident relish.
“It is a chopped raw beef sandwich mixed with chocolate,” she said. “It
is delicious. May I order you one?”
I declined, for it happens that I dislike both raw meats and
chocolates. But I asked her about her regimen, and found that part of
her prescribed daily diet was sandwiches made of chopped or scraped
meat prepared like the meat for a Hamburger steak, and mixed with beef
or mutton broth, butter or cod liver oil, or, as a special reward
of merit she was granted the variety she most liked, raw beef with
chocolate.
Raw oysters were also permitted, but there was almost no lemon juice
sprinkled upon them and vinegar was not allowed upon the table. Eggs
she was allowed without limit, and she was urged to take them beaten
up in milk from which the cream had not been removed. All cereals were
admissable, especially barley, hominy, tapioca and cracked wheat.
It is commonly supposed that thin people are thin for natural
constitutional reasons, and that it is extremely difficult, if not
altogether impossible, to increase weight. It is true that many people
hold a certain weight year after year, neither gaining nor losing more
than a pound or two. It is also true that many efforts to increase
weight accomplish nothing. But thin people need not be discouraged or
settle themselves into the belief that it is impossible to gain weight.
An eminent physician tells me he has known people of middle age who
have never varied more than a few pounds in weight for twenty years, to
add thirty-five pounds in one summer. But this was accomplished, not by
any haphazard luck, but by a most careful, persistent and intelligent
system of nourishment.
Most people are accustomed to eat about the same average amount of
food every day, and they are guided in the amount they eat by their
appetite. The result is that, with about the same daily habits of life
and about the same daily appetite, and with about the same consumption
of nourishment day after day, the bodily weight continues at a fixed
amount. If one is working extra hard, the appetite may be a little
stronger, and the additional weight which might be gained is consumed
by the extra labor which is being performed. During a summer vacation
it often happens that there is a gain of weight of five or eight or
perhaps ten pounds, but this is lost again as soon as the old habits of
life are resumed after the vacation is over.
In formulating a system for increasing weight it is necessary to
consider all of the many factors which may be made to contribute to
the gain. Of course it must be understood at the very outstart that it
is necessary to increase the amount of food we are eating if we are
to increase weight. It is not difficult to understand that a person’s
weight, which is maintained at an even level year after year on a given
quantity of food, is not likely to increase unless the quantity of food
or the quality of the food is increased. But it does not necessarily
follow that weight will increase simply by increasing the amount of
food consumed. Many other factors enter into the problem.
It is probably almost universally true that we eat many things every
day which are of little or no value. Our stomachs are often filled
with more or less worthless food instead of things of great food value.
The most important single factor in gaining weight is the kind of
nourishment that is taken.
Bread, meat, cereals, thin soups, desserts, crackers, pastry and most
vegetables are of very little value in increasing weight.
Thick pea or bean soup, baked beans, Boston brown bread, rice, Welsh
rarebit, cheese, raw eggs, chocolate, milk and cream are the great
producers of weight.
It is, of course, generally well known that rapid and considerable
gains in weight may be made by drinking large quantities of milk. The
flesh gained by abnormal consumption of milk is likely to disappear as
rapidly as it was acquired; and it is the opinion of many of the best
physicians that too much milk puts a dangerous strain upon the kidneys.
Flesh gained through a milk diet is of doubtful value, but flesh
gained by eating the highly nourishing foods I have recommended is of
permanent value.
If a person is eating all his appetite demands, it may be asked how any
one is to eat any more. One way of creating a larger appetite is to
move your meals further apart.
If, for any reason, you are not able to get dinner until an hour or
more after your usual dinner time, you feel a considerably keener
appetite and eat considerably more. If you will apply this to all the
hours for your meals you will find that you are eating a considerably
larger bulk of food each day. Get up earlier in the morning and have
a longer interval between your breakfast and midday meal, and you
will eat probably ten or fifteen per cent. more at noon. Put off your
evening meal an hour later, if possible, and you will find that you eat
a considerably heavier evening meal than you had been eating.
The older you grow the slower are your digestive processes. It takes
fully an hour longer for a person of forty-five to digest the same meal
eaten by a person of twenty.
Everybody knows how pate de foie gras, which is the fat and diseased
liver of a goose, is produced. In Strasburg, where most of the pate de
foie gras comes from, the unfortunate goose is taken into a dark cellar
and one foot is nailed to the floor. The goose is then fed all he will
eat, and when he has finished his meal more food is poked down his
throat with a stick. The goose is, in this way, stuffed with food day
after day, and is not allowed to have fresh air or exercise. The result
is that his liver becomes degenerate, fat and enlarged; and this is the
way pate de foie gras is produced.
The same sort of thing works in the same way with the human anatomy,
and if you are to stuff yourself with extra food and acquire permanent
and valuable flesh, you must thoroughly oxygenate your blood by fresh
air and a reasonable amount of moderate exercise. Sleep with your
window open at night and take a walk morning and evening. Do not run,
hurry or take violent exercise of any kind.
The chief factor in gaining weight is to come to your meals with more
appetite than ever before and eat more than ever before. Eat things
of the highest nutritive value. If you are beginning your dinner with
thick, rich pea soup, try to eat two or even three helpings of it.
Whatever else you eat help yourself to double the usual amount and try
to eat it all. And when you are all through and think you cannot eat
any more, then eat a liberal helping of cheese, and after that drink a
glass or two of milk.
If such a meal taxes your digestion you may need help. The chief
digestive agent of the stomach is hydrochloric acid, and you may add
power to your digestive machinery by taking a little. You may at the
same time stimulate the other gastric secretions with a little nux
vomica. Here is a prescription which will probably help you to take
care of your extra quantity of food:
Diluted hydrochloric acid, 3 drams; tincture nux vomica, 2 drams;
peppermint water and distilled water, each 2 ounces.
Take teaspoonful in wineglassful of water 3 times a day after meals.
Now, this is not all. You may still take a little more nourishment
before you go to bed. Try drinking two glasses of milk--always sip milk
slowly, taking five minutes for each glassful. Better yet, break and
beat two raw eggs into the milk before you drink it. If you can get
sweet cream, drink cream every day. Half a glass of cream is a rather
rich drink, but it can be made easy to digest by diluting it with
seltzer. Get a syphon of cold seltzer and squirt it into the half glass
of cream, and it makes a delicious, nourishing and digestible drink.
Malt and cod liver oil are admirable fat producers. There are on the
market one or two honest preparations of malt and cod liver oil which
are not unpleasant to take. A tablespoonful in a glass of milk makes a
valuable drink.
You should arrange to weigh yourself every day. If possible get a
bathroom scale and always weigh in the morning as soon as you get out
of bed. Whatever you weigh at night you will weigh from one and a half
to two pounds less in the morning. If not convenient to weigh without
your clothes on, then be sure you weigh always with the same clothes.