Part 10 (1/2)

[Sidenote: _Lost Calories_]

When you worry needlessly, notice how tense your muscles are. You are exercising them all of the time and using hundreds of calories of energy. You raise your blood pressure, the internal secretory glands may overact (re-read what I have said about these glands in the fat people), and thus many more calories are used. The intestinal secretions do not flow so freely, you have indigestion and do not a.s.similate your food, and thus hundreds more calories are lost.

It certainly is impossible to gain unless your food is a.s.similated.

[Sidenote: _Develop Poise_]

So the first thing you have to learn is this mental control and to relax. Remember that word, relax. After you are better nourished your nervous system will not be on hair-trigger tension, and it will be easier for you.

[Sidenote: _No Pain In Matter; No Matter In Pain Why Worry?_]

If you are ill in mind or body, remember that it is natural to be well, and that within your body nature has stored the most wonderful forces which are always tending towards the normal, or health, if not obstructed or hindered.

Nature sometimes needs help to stimulate those forces, or to reinforce them, or to remove obstructions. This is where the physician comes in.

But you yourself can aid nature the most by realizing that _nature is health and it is normal to be well_. By so doing, all of your organs function better and you are restored to normal more rapidly.

[Sidenote: _Sleep_]

[Sidenote: _Fresh Air_]

Second: It is very important to have enough sleep. Dr. Richard Cabot says that probably resistance is lowered as much by lack of sufficient sleep as by any other factor, and that all you can soak into your system in twenty-four hours is not too much. Don't forget the fresh air.

You generally suffer from sleeplessness, I believe. The overweights are always advised not to sleep too much. They will find while reducing that they won't want to sleep so much, anyway. They will like to stay awake--they feel so much happier.

[Sidenote: _Sometimes_]

Now, when you retire and try to sleep but cannot, try this--it works with me. You know when you are pa.s.sing over your mental images become distorted and grotesque. I artificially induce that state. If I find myself rehearsing about two hundred times, with appropriate gestures, the keen, witty, logical remarks which I could have made in favor of my pet legislation in the club discussion, but didn't, then I begin after this fas.h.i.+on:

Pink elephants with green ribbons on their tails--red rhinoceri (is that right, or should it be rhinoceroses?)--smiling peanuts--Woman's City Club--Social Health Insurance--why didn't I say--I wish I had said--(here get out, you annoyance!)--pink elephants--and so forth and so forth.

[Sidenote: _Picture of Pink Elephant Adorned_]

[Sidenote: _Woe Is Me_]

Now I realize I have ruined myself. I am my own worst enemy. I have exposed my whole life before those modern vivisectionists, the army of amateur psycho-a.n.a.lysts.

[Sidenote: _Exercise_]

Third: Exercise. Great muscular exertion should be avoided, but the setting-up exercises that I advise, if begun with moderation and increased gradually, will undoubtedly stimulate the appet.i.te and help the body functions to be better performed.

[Sidenote: _Food_]

Fourth: Since food is the only source of body substance, you must gradually train your stomach so that it can care for enough food to not only supply your bodily energy, but to leave a little excess to be stored as fat.

[Sidenote: _Your Stomach_]

If you have a small appet.i.te--and many of you have--your stomach is undoubtedly contracted, and you must gradually add to the amount you have been eating, even though it may cause some distress, until you have disciplined it so that it can handle what you need without distress. The stomach is a muscular organ and can be trained and exercised somewhat as other organs can. You will not have much appet.i.te at first, but it will develop. Sometimes a short fast for a day or two, drinking nothing but pure water, seems to be beneficial in the beginning.

Do not drink much with your meals, unless the drink has food value by the addition of lots of cream or sugar, or both.

[Sidenote: _Eat More_]