en there remains
the dietary method--the old familiar friend, diet. Starting with
William Banting--maybe it didn't start with William, but before
him--but, starting with Bill for present purposes, there have been more
systems of diet invented and promulgated than there have been systems
of religion--and that means about one in every hundred has evolved a
system.

You can get them of all sorts and all sure to do the work, ranging from
an exclusive diet of beefsteak and spinach to desiccated hay and
creamed alfalfa. There are monodiets, duodiets, vegetable diets,
fruit diets, nut diets--all kinds of diets--each guaranteed to take off
flesh if you have too much or to put it on if you have too little.
Basically, however, the antiflesh diets are about the same. You are
told to cut out everything you want to eat and exist on triply toasted
bread and the white meat of a chicken, or string beans and sawdust, or
any other combination the sharps say will not produce fat, but will
sustain life in a lingering form. They surround these diet talks and
presentments with a lot of frills about proteins and calories and all
that sort of guff, and make it as difficult as possible. Now, mark
you, I am not saying diet--scientific diet--is not a good thing, a
magnificent step forward in the progress of this world; but I am saying
that the average fat-reducing diet is impossible to any but a man or
woman of the ultimate will-power, and is a hardship that need not be
endured. I have tried these diets, and I know! They may help reduce
flesh, but they are not easy to follow and they do not contain things
that any person wants to eat or is accustomed to eat, or will eat, to
the exclusion of things that person does want to eat and will eat. It
can be done. One of these diets can be followed if the will-power is
there, and the flesh will come off; but the method does not conduce to
the best results--the physical force is reduced, and there is a much
easier way.

I have one of these diet lists before me now from the highest-priced
flesh-reducing specialist in the world, who claims to have taken
mountains of flesh off mountainous men. In the beginning, for example,
it says: "You will understand, of course, that sugar is entirely
debarred. Also, that fats, milk, cheese, cream, eggs, and so on, are
cut off for the time being. Also that bread and farinaceous foods are
all cut off. In place of bread or toast you must use gluten biscuits.