Staying Healthy, In Top Shape And Beautiful As A Plump And Full Figured Woman Using Natural Methods | Time Honored Tips
“What’s female beauty but an air divine,
Through which the mind’s all-gentle graces shine?
They, like the sun, irradiate all between;
The body charms, because the soul is seen.”
—Young.
If one had to choose between being too fat or too lean, the
wise woman would certainly take the smaller allowance of flesh. Jack Sprat
might incite pleasant ridicule, but Jack Sprat’s wife—lo! there would be naught
but pity and tears for her!
It is better by far to be the butt of jokes
concerning “walking shoestrings” or “perambulating umbrella cases” than to
waddle through life burdened to death with an excessive amount of flesh. The
thin sister can pad out the angles, put frills and puffy things over the bony places,
but alas for the fat one!
She gets into clothes that are skin-tight, and she
draws in her corset string until it snaps and gives at every breath and sneeze,
and even then she does not look graceful and pretty, for the fat—like
secrets—will out, and it rolls over and around like the little bumps and humps
in a pudding bag.
Yet, after all, there’s more hope for her than for her
sister in misery. While some thin girls might revel in cod liver oil and nearly
convert themselves into a hospital storeroom of tonics and fattening foods,
they can’t get round and rotund—the Lord seems to will it that certain persons
are to amble disconsolately through life minus the proper allotment of flesh.
But with the over plump lady it all lies within herself as to whether she is to
be stout and buxom or of more artistic and beautiful proportions. It is simply
a matter of getting up and hustling, a condition of animation frequently
foreign to her nature, but not at all impossible to even the most unwieldy.
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While a certain careful routine of living is necessary for a
speedy change for the better, the two main points to remember are diet and
exercise. To the girl who says: “But I can’t diet. I get hungry. I love sweets
and goodies, and have to have them,” I must reply: “Well, then, be fat.”
What
is worth having is worth working for, and the woman who is too fat for her own
comfort and personal appearance invariably has ahead of her the dreadful bogy
of additional flesh as the years go on. And surely that should be enough to
inspire her to mend her ways.
In beginning the change—that is, in starting out on a
regular system of dieting and exercising—you should remember that the reform
must be worked gradually. One must go slowly into the more healthful manner of
living.
The severe methods of flesh-reducing cannot be too greatly deplored,
and many a woman has lost her life by these extreme measures. I do not mean
that they have died at their exercisers or that they fell exhausted because
they did not have enough to eat, but that in their mad efforts to become thin
quickly they undermined their health and laid a good foundation for physical
disorders.
Good health, with too much plumpness, is preferable to beautiful
proportions and the listlessness and pain of ill health. So you can follow my
advice with the greatest safety, as health—to my way of thinking—is greater
than beauty, for the last depends upon the first, invariably.
To-morrow, when you get up, throw on a loose, warm wrapper,
and then open the window. Stand in the cool, crisp morning air, and expand your
lungs a dozen times, holding your hands on your hips and raising yourself
lightly on your toes.
Vary this by walking across the room, taking long, full
breaths from the abdomen. This practice is equally good for the thin girl, or any
other kind of a girl, for that matter. After airing your lungs close the window
and run into the bath-room, where you should have a quick sponge bath, rubbing
the body briskly with a heavy towel.
A quick alcohol rub can follow, just as
one pleases. For breakfast let there be fresh uncooked fruit, especially
oranges. Tea or coffee must be taken clear, as neither milk nor sugar should be
indulged in by the beauty patient whose chief ambition it is to lose flesh.
Toast must always be eaten instead of bread, and butter used sparingly at all
times.
Avoid fats, starchy cereals, flesh-producing vegetables and pastries.
This is very simple, when you once make up your mind to it. Do not fancy you
are thus left with nothing whatever to eat—like Mother Hubbard’s unhappy dog.
Meats, either cold or broiled, are good if eaten in moderation. Poultry, fish
and game are all right.
Asparagus, string beans, spinach and tomatoes are the
most appetizing of vegetables, and in these four alone there will be sufficient
variety, especially when salads of all sorts are included, although these must,
of course, be taken without oil. Young onions are also excellent, as are
condiments, dried fruits and acidulated drinks.
A hot lemonade, taken every
night, is good, but it must have little sugar, else the effects of the acid
will be overbalanced.
As for exercise, walking is best of all. Running is very
beneficial, but the unique witticisms of the average small boy will probably
keep this form of exercise confined strictly to the house.
Begin by walking
half a mile for several days, then make the distance a mile, and keep
increasing your daily walk until you cover at least five miles. That may sound
like an impossibility, but don’t you believe it, for it’s not at all.
In Great
Britain a walk of fifteen miles is not considered half an effort, and who does
not know that the English girls have the most superb complexions in the world?
Besides this, they are healthy, wholesome, well-developed women, and that
counts a good deal in the race for beauty.
If the five-mile walk is too
exhausting, then take a longer time getting to the point, when it will be
exhilarating instead of enervating.
Sleep must be limited to seven hours, and daily naps are
strictly tabooed.
To those who prefer, mechanical massage can be given, and
this will take the place of long walks, although they are really preferable, as
the fresh air is necessary. Oxygen destroys or burns out carbon, and carbon is
fat.
The more exercise and fresh air, the more oxygen, and consequently destruction
of fat by the one healthy means of remedying obesity. Soda phosphates and the
various fat-reducing preparations are not desirable.
The only way to cajole
willowiness of body into coming in your direction is to diet and to take plenty
of exercise. Do not drink much water. A little lemon juice added to it will
make it less fattening.
There, now, plump lady, are your rules!
Abide by them and
your woes will surely disappear with a swiftness that will make you laugh.
Excerpt From – Woman Beautiful By Helen Follett Stevans.
