Thursday, April 17, 2014

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

From Arizona Territorial Cookbook- Weight Loss

This was too funny not to share!

How to Reduce One's Weight

"A woman weighing 200 pounds called on a physician for advice. He gave her the following instructions:
1. For breakfast eat a piece of beef or mutton as large as your hand, with a slice of white bread twice as large. For dinner the same amount of meat, or if preferred, fish or poultry, with the same amount of farinaceous or vegetable food in the form of bread or potato. For supper nothing.
2. Drink only when greatly annoyed with thirst; than a mouthful of lemonade without sugar.
3. Take three times a week some form of bath in which there shall be immense perspiration. The Turkish bath is best. You must work, either in walking or some other way, several hours a day.
4. You must rise early in the morning and retire late at night. Much sleep fattens people.
5. The terrible corset you have on, which compresses the center of the body, making you look a good deal fatter than you really are, must be taken off, and you must have a corset which any dressmaker can fit to you-- a corset for the lower part of the abdomen-- which will raise this great mass and support you.

She followed the advice for six months, and trained herself down to 152 pounds."
~From the Scrapbook of Nellie von Gerichten Smith

Fat All My Life, and How I Got Rid of It

"First captivating plumpness begins to steal upon a woman in her twenties. Plumpness is followed by- oh, horrors!- fatness and shortness of breath, and heart flutters. Then, alas, comes the chin that is double and the comical lumbering waddle of the overfat. Fine sarcasm to tell such a  woman to exercise. Why not counsel flying? She is as able to do the one as the other. It's another keen cut to suggest dieting. When ladies are just so fat they haven't an ounce of will power or energy to spare for extras- just living is hard enough work for them.
What then? Are these unfortunates condemned to be fat for life? No, believe it or not; a simple home recipe easy to get at a drug store will take that fat off and keep it off. Listen!

1/2 ounce of Marmola
1/2 ounce of Fluid Extract Cascara Aromatic
3 1/2 ounces Syrup Simplex
mixed at home and taken in teaspoonful doses after meals and at bedtime will take off sa much as a pound a day in some cases. Get the Marmola in the sealed packages- you are sure it is fresh that way- take the mixture a month, and you'll see. The fat seems to drop off and leave nice, smooth, firm flesh, while the health and complexion improve wonderfully."
~From an untitled advertisement, circa 1880s in the Journal of Nellie von Gerichten Smith