incased with it apparently.
My waist decreased seven inches. A big layer of fat came off my chest
and abdomen. My legs and arms grew smaller but harder. Even my fingers
grew smaller. My excess of chin evaporated. And at the end of the fifth
month I had taken off fifty-five pounds. I weighed then one hundred and
ninety-five pounds, which is what I weigh today.

Every person, I take it, has a normal weight; and if that person gives
his body a chance, and ill health does not intervene, the body will find
that normal and stay there. I take it that my normal weight, on account
of my big frame and bones, is about one hundred and ninety-five pounds,
at the age of forty-three. At any rate, it has stayed at a hundred and
ninety-five since the first of last July, and in that time I have loafed
for two months and ridden on Pullman cars for two other months, and have
not taken any exercise to speak of; but I have maintained my schedule of
eating and I have not taken any alcohol. I figure I can stay where I am
indefinitely on that program--and that is my program indefinitely.

There are certain economic phases of a campaign of this kind that should
be mentioned. It is expensive. Not one item of clothing, save my hat,
socks and shoes, which fitted me last January is of the slightest use to
me now. I didn't get to cutting down clothes until I was sure I would
stick. Since that time the tailors have had a picnic at my expense. My
shirts were too big. Instead of wearing a seventeen-and-three-quarters
collar, I now wear a sixteen-and-three-quarters. My waist is seven
inches smaller. I even had to have a seal ring I wear cut down so it
would not slip off my finger. While in the transition stage I looked
like a scarecrow. My clothes hung on me like bags.

Since I have had my clothes re-made and new ones constructed I am an
object of continual comment among my friends. They all marvel at my
changed appearance. They are all solicitous about my health. They do
not see how a man can take off more than fifty pounds and not hurt
himself. I do not see how he can keep it on and not kill himself. They
tell me I look like a boy--and I feel like one. I'm as active as I was
twenty years ago. When I was in the mountains this summer, at an
altitude of seventy-five hundred feet, I could climb slopes with no
exhaustion that I couldn't have gone fifteen feet up the year before. My
mind is clearer; my body is better. I figure I