Excerpt from the book
A fat man is a joke; and a fat
woman is two jokes--one on herself
and
the other on her husband. Half
the comedy in the world is
predicated
on the paunch. At that, the human
race is divided into but two
classes--fat people who are trying
to get thin and thin people who are
trying to get fat.
Fat, the doctors say, is fatal.
I move to amend by striking out
the last two letters of the
indictment. Fat is fat. It isn't
any more fatal to be reasonably fat
than to be reasonably thin, but it's
a darned sight more uncomfortable.
So
far as being unreasonably thin or
unreasonably fat is concerned, I
suppose the thin person has the long
end of it. I never was thin, so I
don't know. However, I have been
fat--notice that "have been"?
And if there is any phase of human
enjoyment, any part of life, any
occupation, avocation, divertisement,
pleasure or pain where the fat man
has the better of it in any regard,
I failed to discover it in the
twenty years during which I looked
like the rear end of a hack and had
all the bodily characteristics of a
bale
of hay.
When you come to examine into the
actuating motives for any line of
human endeavor you will find that
vanity figures about ninety per cent,
directly or indirectly, in the
assay. The personal equation is the
ruling equation.
Women want to be thinner because
they will look better--and so do
men. Likewise, women want to be
plumper because they will look
better--and so do men. This holds up
to forty years. After that it
doesn't make much difference whether
either men or women look any better
than they have been looking, so far
as the great end and aim of all life
is concerned.
Consequently fat men and fat
women after forty want to be thinner
for reasons of health and comfort,
or quit and resign themselves to
their further years of obesity.
Now I am over forty. Hence my
experiments in reduction may be
taken at
this time as grounded on a desire
for comfort--not that I did not make
many campaigns against my fat before
I was forty.
I
fought it now and then, but always
retreated before I won a victory.
This time, instead of skirmishing
valiantly for a space and then being
ignominiously and
fatly routed by the powerful forces
of food and drink, I hung stolidly
to the line of my original attack,
harassed the enemy by a constant and
deadly fire--and one morning
discovered I had the foe on the run.
It always makes me laugh to hear
people talk about losing
flesh--unless, of course, the
decrease in weight is due to
illness. No healthy person,
predisposed to fat, ever lost any
flesh.
If
that person gets rid of any weight,
or girth, or fat, it isn't lost--it
is
fought off, beaten off. The victim
struggles with it, goes to the mat
with it, and does not debonairly
drop it. He eliminates it with stern
effort and much travail of the
spirit. It is a job of work, a
grueling combat to the finish, a
task that appalls and usually
repels.
The theory of taking off fat is
the simplest theory in the world. It
is announced, in four words: Stop
eating and drinking. The practice of
fat reduction is the most difficult
thing in the world. Its difficulties
are comprehended in two words: You
cannot.
The flesh is willing, but the spirit
is weak. The success of the
undertaking lies in the triumph of
the will over the appetite. There's
a lovely line of cant for you!
Triumph of the will over the
appetite. |
