CHAPTER XV
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.