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Lose 40 Pounds in 80 Days

I caught on fast. I soon learned the error of my ways. You'll remember, for instance, how I thought a cracker wasn't fattening.

Well, a single salted soda cracker contains about 25 calories! To wear off three graham crackers you would have to hike two miles!

I used to order split pea soup, dump in 8 or 10 crackers, and call that my noontime "diet." I didn't realize this totaled up to about 600 calories.

More than double a full noon "blue plate" lunch!

Often I'd have a doughnut breakfast, just coffee and doughnuts, and figure I was dieting. What I didn't know was that each doughnut has from 200 to 300 calories hidden away in it. And I used to eat about three. So my "diet breakfast" was running around 900 calories! About 600 more than the usual eggs-and-bacon-and-juice breakfast.

I learn from my doctor that it isn't so much a matter of cutting down as balancing.

You don't cut out. You balance foods.

If you eat a doughnut, you cut out the bread; if you have lots of potatoes, you avoid macaroni.

You don't stop eating a single thing, I learned - but you balance up what you eat.

A calorie is a calorie, wherever it may be. The important thing, then, is just to find how many calories are in each item, then make them total no more than 1,500 per day to reduce about a quarter of a pound per diem.

Scientifically balanced meals. That's the trick. Food manufacturers have been telling us this for years.

But it took Strongheart, the dog, to convince me! Looks like the dog is the fat man's best friend at that!


I LEARN MORE ABOUT EXERCISE

Who was it that said when be felt the urge to exercise, he went to bed until the urge wore off?

That's us fatties.

We hate exercise. But we slave away at it - now and then - because we think it will reduce us.

So the most pleasant thing this fatty discovered in his study of calories was this:

Exercise won't reduce you!

It may tone you up, and burn up a few calories in the process, but it won't measurably reduce you. And that's what we're looking for - something we can measure! Especially around the waistline!

I learned that 3,500 calories make up one pound.

I found that if I didn't want to walk 36 miles - fast - in order to take off a single pound of fat, the doc could give me a nice little second choice:

Bend over some 25,000 times!

Or a third. Play 12 rounds of golf - 216 holes!

If I wanted to work off the 200 to 300 calories I took on board by eating one doughnut, I'd have to saw wood for one hour!

To make me do that, someone would have to stand over me with a bull whip-and my wife hasn't got the time.

The minute I got this lowdown on the doughnut, I avoided it. I prefer a hammock any time!

I learned that there's one big trouble with exercise: it works up an appetite. You burn up 200 calories mowing the lawn, and then, hungry as a horse, you gobble up 2,000.

You don't have to be Einstein to figure out that this leaves you 1,800 on the wrong side! And probably with a Charley horse to boot.

I found you had to use judgment.

Who wants to be a musclebound behemoth, anyway? Gorgeous George can go his way and I'll go mine!

Next: How To Eat To Lose Weight

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