Slimming the Body through Physical Education

A journalist asked the famous screen actress Vivien Leigh what food she liked best, and she answered: the food I like best is the kind that stays ten seconds in the mouth and ten years on the waist — sweets.

And now let us come straight to the subject. How do we grow fat? We grow fat when we eat more food than we burn up in bodily movement. The body stores what is left over in the form of fat, to burn it in time of need. And if these surpluses which the body stores as fat keep recurring, the stored fat piles up. The body stores these fatty leftovers in depots above the lazy muscles — the muscles of the stomach, the chest, and the hips — and in a short while they become great, round, movable depots of fatty matter. Then the shape of our bodies no longer answers to the standards of health and beauty. Muscle sheathed in fat has little suppleness, is slow in movement, and its blood circulation is hampered in its course. From the health standpoint, the least that can be said of us then is that we are loading upon our organs, over and above their wearying duties, a heavy guest of no use whatever — one that, on the contrary, demands care and food.

So the digestive, circulatory, and nervous systems fall short of doing their duty, because we have loaded them with more than they were made for; the body's balance is upset, and it becomes liable to collapse. We must therefore fight fat and remove it promptly, before it grows beyond control.

And since cutting down our food has a direct effect on the health of our nervous and digestive systems, let us be on our guard.

First – let us make sure that we eat enough of the food that protects the vital organs and does not fatten, such as eggs, milk, fruit, and vegetables. This kind of food contains the vitamins necessary for sound eyes, a healthy heart, and steady nerves. We must eat of them in order to keep our vigor and our freshness.

Second – it is necessary to keep away from starches, sweets, and fats almost entirely — I do not say entirely: for rice, potatoes, and sweets of every kind contain great quantities of calories, which the body uses as fuel needed for movement and warmth.

The ideal way to burn the store of hateful fat is to add bodily movements to our habitual movements. The experts have agreed, after many experiments, that light physical exercise, of the kind we can repeat hundreds of times, is the movement capable of burning fat, for it produces heat in the body, which then sweats in abundant quantities. Long, slow running lets us repeat our strides hundreds of times; and long walking, rope-skipping, light Swedish exercises — bending, twisting, jumping, contracting and stretching the muscles — and all the light athletic games that make the body sweat, such as tennis and basketball: every one of these movements we have mentioned, and others besides, if a person keeps at it four days a week and patiently repeats it until his body sweats abundantly each time, will thereby assure him

of burning off, little by little, the fats accumulated upon him.

And to assure ourselves a good, thorough result from the standpoint of health, and one quick in its effect, when we set about the operation of reducing our weight, we would do well to consider the following points:

During reducing exercise let us wear thin clothing that covers all the muscles of the body — except the face, naturally — made of wool or of cotton, to hold in the heat and ease the process of sweating, which in this matter is the very heart of the business. Such clothing also protects the tired body from the many harms of cold.

Sweat carries away with it much of our bodies' salt, which is necessary for a sound blood circulation; so after exercise let us take foods containing visible salt.

Whoever carries much fat, beyond the ordinary, and has been in this condition since childhood, should consult a specialist physician, for it is known that this condition also results from a weakness of the glands, in which physical education plays no part.

The reducing process, as the specialists say, begins slow in its results, tiring, and tedious; but whoever bears patiently with it and with its fatigues will without doubt obtain a satisfying result in point of health and beauty.

And let us always remember that fat, once it has piled up on our muscles gradually, cannot be removed in a sound way except as it came — that is, gradually — for a loss of weight faster than five kilograms a month constitutes a danger to the heart and the lungs. Let us therefore watch our weight every week, at the same hour and in clothing of the same weight; and if we find our weight dropping faster than the upper limit, let us increase the quantity of food — and the reverse likewise.