Women Diet and Autobiographical

I did not give our thin friends a sample menu for fear it would upset them; but nothing can upset your digestion, I know. However, I will not give you a sample menu, either, but will tell you what I eat when I go on a reduction regime, which for me is 1200 Calories.
You will notice, most of my calories I have at dinner in the evening. You may not like this, but would rather have yours spread over the entire day; and you can suit your fancy, for it makes no difference as long as your total number per day stays within your reduction limit.

Make Out Several Menus if You Like

Don't think you have to follow my menu. You might gain on it! Study the Key and select your own.
Many will lose by going on the no-breakfast plan, or the no-lunch plan. If they do reduce, it is because they have lowered their daily consumption of food, and not because of the no-breakfast or no-lunch plan per se.
Fat seems to melt faster when the chief meal is in the middle of the day, and with only 200 or 300 calories of fruit for the evening meal. In this way you slim while you sleep.

MY BREAKFAST

1 slice very dry coarse bread toast 1/4 in. thick	50 C.
Butter, 1/4 cu. in	25 C.
Hot water flavored with coffee	00 C.
	——
Total	75 C.

Slim While You Sleep! Clever?

You may prefer many more calories for breakfast, or none at all. This may not look good to you, but it means an awful lot in my young life, after my exercise and bath, to sit down to my little breakfast and read the papers.
Recently I have found that two cups of moderately hot water with the juice of a lemon answers just as well as the toast and watery coffee, and is probably better. You might like some fruit.

MY LUNCHEON

1 corn muffin—I am patriotic	125 C.
1 pat butter	100 C.
1 cup coffee with 1 tbsp. cream	50 C.
	———
Total	275 C.

If you are patriotic and constipated, substitute one bran muffin. You can see that this is in reality a further extension of my sumptuous breakfast. If I get tired of this, I add a salad of

Lettuce, large amount, practically	00 C.
Roquefort cheese dressing	100 C.

I am very fond of this Roquefort cheese dressing; 1-1/8in. cube of cheese in a little vinegar, no oil, keeps it within the hundred calories.
You might prefer a baked apple or two tomatoes, or a dish of prunes, or 3 oz. of cottage cheese. The chief thing is to take what you like, not what I like. Count your calories.

MY DINNER

I Don't Mean Your Husband's Dessert, I Mean My Husband's. My Word! I Got Out of That Quick!

Vegetable soup, or bouillon, no fat; or small oyster cocktail	25 C.
Lean meat, or "unthinking" lobster or fish, 5 or 6 oz	300 C.
Large serving of uncooked lettuce or cabbage, practically	00 C.
Mayonnaise or oil, 1/2 dsp	50 C.
1 large dish tomatoes, or cauliflower,
or string beans, or carrots, or turnips
(I hate turnips—just put them
down so you can see you can have them if you like)	25 C.
1 medium slice bread, or 1 medium potato	100 C.
1 pat butter	100 C.
100 calories of your husband's dessert	100 C.
Water	00 C.
1 cup cereal coffee, clear, practically	00 C.
	————
Total	700 C.

SUMMARY

Breakfast	75 C.
Luncheon including salad	375 C.
Dinner	700 C.
	———
	1150 C.

That leaves me 50 more calories to total 1200, to take before retiring if I am hungry. You should leave this 50 calories to take before retiring, because if you are hungry you will find it very difficult to go to sleep.
A small cup of hot skimmed milk tends to be a sedative. Hunger, like cold feet, is hard to go to sleep on.

For Both Sexes

 

If there is one thing more important than another, it is thorough mastication.

Sometimes I Take More Than 100 Calories of My Husband's Dessert. I Love Fat Men, But I Don't Want to Be Married to 'Em

This applies to the thin as well as to the fat, and to the child as well as to the adult. Take a moderate mouthful and rassel with it until it is automatically swallowed. Chew until it is all gone before you put any more in your mouth. There is no better way of jollying yourself into thinking that you have had all you want than this Fletcherizing habit, and it takes the same time to consume one-half the amount of food you have been in the habit of eating.

I will allow you all the water you want, in reason; in fact, I advise it while you are reducing, both at the meals and between meals. The only precaution is that at the meals it should not be drunk while food is in the mouth, for this would tend to lessen thorough mastication.
Now, Madam and Madam's husband, when are you going to begin this important business of reducing? After the holidays? Tomorrow? No! Right now. The sooner you get started, the better. The chief thing to do, and the hardest, is to get started and to get the habit. After the first three days you will not dread it; in fact; you will feel so much better that you will not be willing to go back to your old habits of overeating.
Now let's review a bit what you are to do.

Plan the Day Before

First: Pledge yourself to yourself, and to someone else, so you will be ashamed to fail. There is a great deal of psychology to reducing. Use strong auto-suggestion. Decide just how much you are going to eat in advance of the meal—so many calories, no more! This sounds foolish, but it helps wonderfully.
Second: Begin with a fast or a low caloric diet for the first day; keep it, if necessary, one day weekly.

Low Bridge on Fats and Pastries

Third: Study food list and make out menus the caloric totals of which are less than your maintenance diet. Have a fairly balanced diet, some fat, some carbohydrates, some protein, and a good amount of green vegetables and fruit. Have 200-300 C's of protein.
Fourth: Masticate every morsel with such thoroughness that it is automatically swallowed.
Fifth: Keep up your activities—Red Cross and other relief work.
Sixth: Remember that you will feel good in your little heart when you resist temptation to overeat, and when you don't, you won't feel good anywhere.

Seventh: Some vigorous exercise every day.

There Is Life Substance and Intelligence in Chocolate Creams!

NOTE: If there comes a time when you think you will die unless you have some chocolate creams, go on a c.c. debauch. I do, occasionally, and will eat as many as ten or so; but I take them before dinner, then me for the balance of my dinner—

1 bowl of clear soup	25 C.
1 cracker	25 C.
	———
Total	50 C.