DIETING
Likewise also as it was in the days Of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.
—Luke 17:28
1120 Obesity In US
Obesity is one of the most common medical complaints in the US today. About one-tenth to one-quarter of the US population are overweight to some extent, and spend over $400 million a year on reducing drugs and treatments. Physicians interested in this area of practice have even formed the American Society of Bariatrics.
1121 Diet Soft Drinks
Bottlers sell $1.5 billion worth of diet soft drinks annually. That is 15% of the total U. S. soft-drink market, and has been the fastest growing segment, thanks to heavy advertising and a weight-conscious citizenry.
1122 Trimming Equipment
Today’s easy-exercise-equipment market is doing a $100 million-a-year business in belts and wheels, inflatable suits, stretch straps, electronic and battery-operated devices—all designed to knock off pounds and inches with a minimum of effort on the part of the individual.
Another hot item is “Trim-Jeans,” plastic pants which are put on, inflated with an air pump, and worn for half an hour. The pants work by trapping body heat between vinyl and skin; the heat “breaks down fatty tissues.”
The most passive plan is the “Trim-A-Way” salon located across the US. The ingredients: strips of cloth and a secret formula. The method: wrapping. The results: a guaranteed loss of 2 inches the first session, 5 by the 5th. The naked customer is firmly wrapped in rolls of wet linen in oversized bandages, from the ankles up, pressing the fat upward. Circulation cut by one-fourth, the client gets soaked with a mysterious liquid, then zipped into a plastic suit. There the client lies for 90 minutes and is unzipped.
It is claimed that this method squeezes the superfluous fluid from pockets of fat in the body, forcing it into the body system. Doctors however put little stock in the system, claiming that loss of weight is due to fright or imagination.
1123 Magic Diet: Use Jaw Clamps
From England: housewife Shirley Turner, whose jaws were clamped together to help her to diet, has lost 70 pounds (about 32 kilos).
Mrs. Turner, 36, had weighed 250 pounds (about 112 kilos) when she began her all-liquid diet.
The clamp will be removed when she reaches her “bikini weight” of one hundred thirty pounds (about 60 kilos).
—Reuter
1124 Lockjaw Dieting
Another news, this time from Michigan:
Debi Horn wants to lose another 40 pounds. So she’s had her jaws wired shut for the second time in a year.
Mrs. Horn, who became the first American to try the unique “lockjaw” diet in December 1973, says she gained back nearly five pounds since the wires were removed in July and now tips the scales at 162 pounds. She lost 73 pounds with her first diet.
—Associated Press
1125 Slimming Records
A 30-year-old British teacher who lost 112 pounds in less than a year was named 1975 “Slimmer of the year.”
During the award ceremony at a London Hotel Mrs. Marlene Johnson, who weighed 221 pounds before her diet, revealed the secret to her success. For months, she said, “I ate only cottage cheese, celery, tomatoes and fruit.”
The greatest recorded slimming feat, however, was that of William J. Cobb. He reduced from 802 lbs. to 232 lbs.—a loss of 570 lbs.—in 3 years. His waist measurement declined from 101 inches to 44 inches. In October 1973, he reported back to a “normal” 650 lbs.
1126 Photo Of Starving Child Enough
Guideposts magazine published an account of how one person found a key to a meaningful reducing program. Mary Bowers MacKorell was told by her doctor to take off several pounds. She quickly went through the syndrome of diet plans, dietetic foods, and calorie counting, but she couldn’t seem to find the necessary will power.
One day she received in the mail a pamphlet appealing for money to help feed needy children. On the cover was a picture of a dark-skinned boy whose scrawny chest and limbs made him look like a tiny skeleton. The sight of this starving child was a kind of spiritual shock treatment, she says. It started her thinking about how she could take off her unneeded pounds and at the same time help to put some desperately needed pounds on the body of a starving child.
“At last I had a spiritual motivation for reducing,” she said. “Under God’s guidance I formed a practical plan and carried it through. For a period of ten days I ate only two meals each day, skipping lunch. Each day at the lunch hour I sipped a sugar-free drink and looked at the picture of the starving boy. I prayed God to bless him and let my extra weight be transferred to him or someone like him. For each lunch omitted I placed in a box one dollar saved.”
1127 Fat People’s Policy
People who go on a diet can now have another tangible measure of their progress: life-insurance rates that trim down along with their waistlines. Under a new program, members of Weight Watchers International, Inc., the firm that has some 3,000,000 members, are given these incentives:
Premiums for term life-insurance policies are based not only on age but also on bulk. Members who lose the required number of pounds and keep them off for at least six months are given rate reductions.
Previously, the most cholesterol-clogged division pay about four times the premium assessed on people of the same age who have reached the weights. Thus the cost of an eating spree can now be measure in cash as well as calories.
1128 Investing In Slimmed Staff
A real-state firm in Nanaimo, B. C., pays a bonus of $20 for the first ten pounds lost by a dieting employee and $2.50 for every pound lost after that. The company found that its slimmed-down staff has increased sales by 15 percent and office efficiency by 20 percent.
—Women’s News Service
1129 Another Company Also Invests
Jim Miller, Intermatic, Inc., Spring Grove, Ill., offered his overweight employees $3.00 for every pound of fat they lost, if they would lose at least 15 pounds. Miller said he noticed so many fatties among the 500 employees in his factory, where he manufactures timers and heaters, that he became concerned. His offer was accepted by 137 people.
The contest cost the company approximately $3,000, a good investment in better health for the employees.
1130 “You Can’t Run Country If … ”
With his six-foot, three-inch frame and carrying over 210 pounds, former Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson was given some weighty wisdom by his wife. Mrs. Johnson has told the President: “You can’t run the country if you can’t run yourself.” And the President took that word to heart, and pulled his weight down to about 187 pounds.
1131 Depending On Son’s Willpower
In desperation at my 20 pounds overweight, I put my 14-year-old son in charge of my diet. Steve was delighted. With typical teenage ruthlessness, he would stop a potato chip halfway to my lips. “You can’t eat that! Put it back,” he would say firmly. When he came home from school he would ask, “What did you eat today?” and listen with deep interest and appropriate reactions.
My food intake was slashed radically. I didn’t have to stiffen my resolve when faced with a goodie; I just said to myself, “Steve won’t let me eat that,” and I gradually lost the whole 20 pounds, coasting along on his willpower.
As for Steve, he had the time of his life. After years of listening to “Do your homework!” and “Do your practicing!” and so on, he finally had a chance to tell an adult what to do, and to feel virtuous about it at the same time.
—Woman’s Day
1132 Overweight And Mortality Rates
Life insurance studies show that those who are overweight for their height and age have higher mortality rates than those of average weight or less-than-average weight.
Thus, men 10 percent overweight have an excess of 13 percent mortality; those 20 percent overweight, have an excess of 25 percent mortality; those 30 percent overweight, 42 percent mortality.
Among women are much the same conditions. Those 10 percent overweight shows an excess mortality of 9 percent; those 20 percent overweight, 21 percent excess mortality; those 30 percent overweight, 30 percent mortality. The penalty for overweight appears to be lighter for women than for men.
Insurance companies point out that if persons of any particular build keep their weight down to the average in the early twenties, it would be fairly close to the desirable weight at ages over 25.
1133 Fattest Men
It appears that people are getting fatter as the centuries roll by—at least for the heavyweight record holders.
During the 18th century, Edward Bright of Essex, England, was fat enough to be recorded in books. His weight was 616 pounds. He died in 1750, age thirty.
In 1857, Miles Darden came along, weighing slightly over 1,000 lbs. He was the heaviest man then known to medical science.
Then Robert Earl Hughes was born in Monticello, Illinois, in 1926. This 11½ lb. baby weighed 203 lbs. at age 6,
378 lbs. at age 10,
546 lbs. at age 13,
693 lbs. at age 18,
896 lbs. at age 25,
945 lbs. at age 27,
1,041 lbs. at age 32 when he died.
His greatest recorded weight was 1,069 lbs. His coffin was as large as a piano case, and had to be lowered by crane.
1134 “Fat Is Beautiful”
There is now a group called the National Association to Aid Fat Americans, with chapters in nine cities from New York to Los Angeles. It is embarking on an educational program to convince the public that “fat is beautiful.”
1135 Business In Big-ness
Size 52 hot pants? It sounds improbable, but a cheerful 300-pounder named Nancy Austin not only wears them but markets them. She is drawing customers from all over the U. S. for custom-designed fat-lady clothes. Until she began selling her bright, fashionable originals at a small shop in Las Vegas, clothes for chubby women were mostly dismal, shapeless outfits intended primarily for camouflage. Nancy has other ideas. Her shop, which opened in 1970 on a skinny $5,000 investment, grossed nearly $100,000 the second year.
Sales figures like that are produced, in part at least, by avoiding the use of words like fat. Nancy calls her customers “queen-size ladies” and is equally tactful about sizes. “Most stores call you small, medium, large or extra large,” she says, “but in our shop you’re Petite (size 16 to 20), Coquette (size 22½ to 26½) or Mademoiselle (26½ to 32½).” Anything larger ranks in the Duchess class. Nancy herself is in the Mademoiselle bracket, and she has ordained that all her models and sales personnel must be at least a size 16.
—Time
1136 He Refuses To Starve To Live
The composer Brahms was a great devotee of culinary art, not from the creative but from the consuming standpoint. At one time his doctor ordered him on a reduced diet, and Brahms promised faithfully to follow his orders.
The very next day the doctor saw Brahms in a famous Viennese restaurant in deep communion with a very rich and very Viennese meal.
“So this is the way you obey my orders,” said the doctor reproachfully.
Brahms looked up from the table. “Oh don’t bother about it! Do you suppose I’m going to starve to death just to be able to live a few more years?”
1137 How To Replace Cream Pie
A friend of mine who was pregnant was on a strict diet, and both her doctor and her husband kept close tabs on her. She is a good cook and didn’t want to deprive her husband of sweets just because she couldn’t eat them. One day she made a chocolate cream pie for lunch, and her husband ate half of it. While clearing the table, she decided to sneak just a bite. One bite led to another, and before long she had eaten the rest of the pie. Knowing that her husband would lecture her, she could think of only one way of keeping her secret. She quickly made another chocolate cream pie and ate half of it.
—Reader’s Digest
1138 Fat Owners Own Fat Dogs
Fat dog-owners are likely to have fat dogs. A study conducted at an animal hospital in Grimsby, England, indicates, not surprisingly, that if the owner does not exercise or eat properly, neither will his dog. More than one-fourth of the dogs examined were obese.
—Family Health
1139 Thumb Is Non-Fattening
A young mother thought it was time to break her little boy of thumb-sucking, and she decided to do it by psychology. “Now, tell me, Johnny, does your thumb taste good?”
“No,” the boy admitted.
“Is it good to chew on?”
The boy shook his head.
“Then what is good about sucking your thumb?”
“Well,” the boy said after some thought, “it’s non-fattening.”
—Family Weekly
1140 Epigram On Dieting
• A woman’s fondest wish is to be weighed and found wanting.
—The Bible Friend
• Americans have more food to eat than any other people in the world, and more diets to keep us from eating it.
—Bits & Pieces
• Elephants live longer than people, according to a book we read. Maybe that’s because they never worry about trying to lose weight.
—Knoxville News-Sentinel
• The story is told of a small girl who was showing the bathroom scale to a playmate … ”All I know is you stand on it and it makes you angry. … ”
• Want to kill your husband and get away with it? Don’t bother with cyanide, blunt instruments, or revolvers! Just feed him a steady diet of rich pastries and heavy starches until he is at least 15 to 25 percent overweight!
See also: Eating and Drinking ; Rev 18:14.