Articles on weight reduction are featured everywhere. Weird diets and reducing fads have their day or month and disappear. Even the old Hollywood 18-day-diet is being revived. Formerly just the women were interested, but now whole series of articles deal with the weight of men and boys.

Obesity is a disorder of the body's functioning which results in deposits of excess fat throughout the tissues. Doctors take special note of obesity because of the relationship between overweight and disorders of the heart, high blood pressure, diabetes, and joint disturbances.

Most experts are now agreed that by far the most frequent cause of obesity is the taking of too much food in proportion to the amount of energy that the person uses. Most people eat without too much attention to the weight problem, and yet the body can adjust itself reasonably well to getting rid of what is not used.

Some families consistently overeat, and therefore the children, imitating their parents, become overweight. Occasionally executives find that ,a snack enables them to carry on at their desks beyond the onset of fatigue; eating becomes a substitute for needed rest. As we get older we tend to walk and climb and move about less than previously. Unless we reduce the food intake overweight appears. Occasionally an illness stops physical activity, and obesity may result.

Obesity

The person who habitually overeats is always looking for an alibi. He points to someone else who eats a great deal and doesn't get fat then he argues that his own body is different and that he absorbs where the other does not. People do differ as to the extent to which their bodies will take up fat stores, and people also differ in their basal metabolic rates. Rarely however is overweight due to glandular deficiencies. The glands are more concerned with the areas of the body in which the fat is deposited-for instance, female hips, breasts and buttocks-the male jowls and paunch -than with overweight as a whole. Certain diseases with degeneration of important glands may be accompanied by weight increase. However, Dr. George Thorn says: "Many endocrine disturbances result from rather than cause obesity."

Everybody knows the obvious difficulties of the body associated with overweight. Fat people get out of breath, get tired easily and have pain in the joints of the knees, hips, and lower back. Fat people can't stand hot weather, they get more headaches, irritations of the skin and digestive disturbances. Fat women have more trouble with gall-bladder difficulties, diabetes, blood pressure and disturbances of their periodic functions than do thin women.

All authorities are now agreed that the proper way to reduce weight is to lessen the intake of food below the amount needed for the individual's energy. However, any person must still get the essential protein, vitamin and mineral substances necessary to maintain health.

These Foods Can Be Included In 3 Meals A Day

Breakfast: Orange, grapefruit, or tomato. Cereal, sugar, milk or cream. Bread, butter. Milk, coffee, or tea.

Lunch or Supper: Meat or other protein food. Vegetable. Bread, butter. Milk-drink or soup. Fruit dessert.

Dinner: Meat or other protein food. Potato or other vegetable. Green or yellow vegetable. Bread, butter. Milk-drink. Milk or other dessert.

Important:

Eat fruits and vegetables raw frequently. Choose a dark-green, leafy vegetable two or three times a week. Have a variety of different vegetables from day to day. Include a serving of liver about once a week. Use at least four eggs each week-in cooking, at lunch, or for breakfast if a first meal larger than suggested is desired.

Low-Calorie Diet Plan

Being on a low-calorie diet means that the energy required above the calories supplied by the diet must come from the stored body fat. The result is loss of weight.

Essential nutrients must be supplied daily by your diet. This is why your choice of foods is as important as the amount you eat.

Low-Calorie Diet

• Don't try to lose more than two pounds a week. Faster weight-loss is not advised by medical authorities.

• Don't give up if no weight is lost the first week or ten days. There are often adjustments in body fluids during this time.

• Cut down on salt if you are now a generous user.

• Exercise moderately if you sit most of the day; it helps replace lost fat with firm muscle tissue.

• Remember that alcoholic beverages add calories and whet the appetite so that it's more difficult to stay on the diet.

• Eat slowly, and make your mealtimes pleasant.

Gaining Diet

1. Co-operate with your doctor to eliminate any medical causes of underweight.

2. Have eight to ten hours rest in bed. Try to be in bed by 10 P.M. A lukewarm bath at bedtime may help induce sleep. If possible, have a thirty-minute rest before the evening meal.

3. Have pleasant surroundings and forget troubles while eating.

4. Be sure that food is attractively and palatably served.

5. Try these ways to increase appetite:

• Take a mild exercise on getting out of bed in the morning.

• Have a warm, changing to cool, shower before breakfast.

• Cut down on or eliminate the smoking habit.

• Eat a little more each meal than is needed to satisfy appetite.

Mealtime Directions

At Breakfast:

1. Double amount of fruit juice.

2. Choose a hot enriched cereal and use a pat of butter on it as well

3. Double amount of butter on bread

4. Take two eggs.

5. Add a breakfast meat such as ham or bacon.

6. Add cream to milk or milk-cocoa, or use generous amounts of cream and sugar in coffee or tea.

At Lunch or Supper:

1. Increase size of main dish and vegetable servings. Use generous amounts of gravies, sauces, and/or mayonnaise.

2. Use an extra pat of butter on vegetable and bread.

3. Add plain or whipped cream to milk, hot or cold chocolate milk, hot cocoa, or cream soup.

4. Select a dessert such as the following:

• Cooked and sweetened dried fruits.

• Bananas with cream and sugar.

• Apple dumpling or baked apple with a sweet sauce or cream.

• Fruit pies-use cheese with apple pie; ice cream on others.

Mid-Afternoon:

Drink one of the following-milk, chocolate milk or cocoa, milk with added cream or ice cream, milk beaten up with a raw egg and flavored with sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg.

At Dinner:

1. Increase size of main dish and vegetable servings. Use generous amounts of gravies, sauces, and/or mayonnaise.

2. Use an extra pat of butter on vegetables and bread.

3. Add cream to milk or have hot or cold chocolate milk or cocoa.

4. Select a dessert such as the following:

• Baked custard with caramel sauce or whipped cream.

• Bread, cornstarch, or rice pudding with suitable sauce or cream.

• Cake topped with whipped cream or with a fruit, butterscotch, or chocolate sauce.

• Cream or custard pie topped with whipped cream.

• Ice cream sundae with cake or cookies.

At Bedtime:

1. Eat a bowl of cereal with sugar and cream, OR

2. Drink warm milk, cocoa or chocolate and take with it a light, digestible snack.

Low Salt Diet

Pure sodium, which is one of the two elements in sodium chloride, or common salt, is seldom found except in chemical laboratories. Many combinations of sodium with other elements are used in diet and in industry. Table salt is sodium chloride. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate.

The average man takes in his diet about half an ounce of sodium r chloride every day. It is easy, on a low salt diet, to reduce this to about one fifth as much. This is done particularly when excess of fluid accumulates in the tissues, as in dropsy. No one knows exactly the minimum or maximum of sodium chloride that anyone person ought to have, but fortunately the human body is equipped with factors of safety, so that it can get rid of excesses of various substances. The average human body contains at all times about three ounces of sodium chloride. The use of salt by the body and its elimination by the kidney are apparently I controlled by the cortex or outer layer of the adrenal gland.

Many vegetables contain another salt with an element similar to sodium, namely, potassium. A person who subsists on a vegetable diet craves salt, because vegetables contain less sodium than meat. The moment the salt in the human body falls below the amount necessary, a craving is set up.

Restricted Salt Diet

Use NO SALT in Food Preparation -Use NO SALT at TABLE!

Breakfast: Fruit or Fruit Juice

• Salt-free Cereal with Milk or Cream and Sugar

• Egg, if desired

• Toast, Muffins, or Rolls

• Unsalted Butter or other Spread

• Jam or Marmalade

• Beverage

Lunch Or Supper: Meat, Fish, or other Main Dish,

• Vegetable

• Salad

• Rolls or Bread

• Unsalted Butter or other Spread

• Dessert

• Milk

Dinner: Fruit Juice or Soup, if desired .

• Meat, Fish, or other Main Dish

• Potato

• Vegetable

• Rolls or Bread

• Unsalted Butter or other Spread

• Dessert

• Beverage