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made from white flour has sugar in it — you would still be laying on a lot of fat quickly because starch turns into sugar in the digestive process. Like sugar, white flour is always void of any nutritional element other than calories, lots of bare calories easily assimilated into your fat system.

      Knock off all processed sugar and processed flour. This means spurning almost all processed foods because, as I say, almost all of them contain either sugar or white flour. Eat whole-grain breads. But be sure to read the labels. You will learn that even "wholewheat" bread sometimes contains white flour. Of course, wholegrain breads contain starch that turns to sugar, too, but at least they provide needed roughage at the same time. As for sugar, be advised that brown sugar, fruit sugar, turbino sugar, raw sugar, molasses, syrup, and honey are all sugar. Yes, I know honey is natural, but it is also processed. Bees process it: they extract it from sweet flower nectar and refine it into honey. Give up honey. And grit your teeth, because for some of you, the worst is yet to come.

      What do you put in your coffee or tea? Milk? Lemon? Alcohol? A bit of brandy in your coffee? Alas, alcohol is right in there with sugar and white flour, but I am trying to be reasonable, and since most American adults drink, all I can say is count the calories. I don't advise a diet of 900 calories of beer a day, but it has been done. It isn't a good idea. Wine is loaded with sugar. Well, it's up to you.

      Instead of processed foods containing sugar and white flour, you eat fresh vegetables, raw or lightly cooked. Don't add sugar. Eat whole-grain breads and pastas, eggs, milk, cheese, fresh meat and fish.

      What about butter, oil, and lard? Fatty meats? Your body needs fat, you know. Go ahead and eat them. Just count the calories. If you stay on your diet, whether to lose weight or to maintain it, you aren't likely to eat enough fat to hurt yourself. Some crank diets consist only of meat and fat, and of course Eskimos once were quite healthy on nothing else. We fixed the Eskimos by exporting sugar and white flour (and smallpox) to the Arctic Circle.

      Eat meat. Deep-fry it if you will. Just count the calories. I don't ask you to be a vegetarian, but you will find that you can eat more food if you concentrate on vegetables and cut down on meat and fat. If you are used to eating a lot, you may find that high-bulk, low-calorie foods weigh heavily on the scale of desirability when you're on your diet.

      The crucial thing, the radical thing, the thing that makes this hard enough to be interesting and thus workable, is cutting out processed foods. You have to modify your behavior by eating less overall. But just cutting down on calories while eating the same old foods will not modify your eating behavior sufficiently to make you stay the course. Cutting out processed foods just might do it.

      Now it is time to run back to your friends or the library or the bookstore to get more books, low-calorie cookbooks, natural-food cookbooks, no-sugar, no-white-flour cookbooks. Add these cookbooks to your library on inspirational literature. Read and think thin. You can lose weight and keep it off. People do. You will have to change most of your eating and cooking routines? Good. You're on your way to a wonderful world of new taste sensations.

      I just heard my sister say, "Bull."

      "Oreos and donuts and malted milks and Shakey's pizza," that's what she's saying.

      OK, OK, I did not say it would be easy. At first it will be hell. And that's what I'm counting on. I mean, if you are not tough enough to go through the initial withdrawal symptoms, then buzz off. You don't get something for nothing. Most Americans can hardly conceive of going off processed foods. And sure, once you've been on your maintenance diet for several years, you can probably handle, say, a milkshake now and then. (It won't taste the same.) Right now it's cold turkey. Just knock off sugar-full, fat-full processed foods and go on from there. You want a new life, don't you? A wonderful new life at that sexy, perennial, steady, stable, new low weight? Well, then, do what I say.

      It is not impossible. Of course, I know you go out to dinner. Go, and eat what is set in front of you. You are not playing around this time, however, so please don't indulge in the dieter's game of one-upping the hostess as you refuse to eat the mashed potatoes and gravy, only to give in by taking a full serving of the chocolate pie. Try to eat less if you can without being conspicuous; refuse dessert if possible. If you blow it, you blow it. The real test is the next day.

      Start over again. It will be painful. One helpful trick is to make sure before you go out that you leave only fresh fruit and vegetables in the refrigerator to snack on. If you don't keep powdered sugar donuts in the house, you can't pig out on them. You are always weakest after a feast, because you think that a bit more can't do much worse than has already been done. It can. A meal you have to eat to be civilized and social is one thing, but breaking your diet on your own can destroy all you have built up, like W. C. Fields's fatal glass of beer. So remove temptation.

      You have children, so the house is full of junk food? They would be better off on your diet, too. Don't tell me, I know how hard it is, I tried. About the best advice I can give you is to make sure your spouse is on the diet, too. Then have only one child (two parents outnumber one child). Children raised on this diet will prefer it, at least for a while. When they get older, they will rebel. Fine, that's normal. You have to let them go sometime. Maybe later on they'll come back to the wisdom of your ways. If they've been on processed and junk foods for years before you started your diet, remember that you were, too. You can try to bring them around, but don't go to war with them over it. They will grow up someday, and perhaps even leave home (that's a family joke). In any event, nobody can be forced to diet like this. You have to do it on your own.

      If you take someone out to dinner, try to pick a natural-food or vegetarian or Chinese restaurant where there is some chance of your keeping somewhere near your diet. Did I say Chinese restaurant? White rice is as bad as white flour. Watch out for couscous, too.

      You will know that you are making progress when you find that a raw carrot tastes very sweet. Peas have a lot of natural sugar in them, have you noticed yet? After a while you will tend towards salads (plain vinegar and oil, please) simply because you need to stuff your gut, and salads have a lot of bulk. Vegetables. Whole grains. You are counting calories so carefully that you begin to think twice before you blow a lot of them on a small piece of meat. When you start finding that you prefer vegetable casserole to a steak, you're on your way. This fresh food routine forces your eating behavior away from the high-calorie meat, potatoes and gravy, and pie most Americans grew up on. The vegetarian health books you are reading for inspiration will tell you that cutting down on meat is healthy for you. Probably it is, but that doesn't matter so much by itself. What matters now is that you are making a radical alteration in your eating habits. You have to, if you are to maintain your desired weight once you get down to it. Have I already said that if you just cut down the quantity of what you have been eating before, you will eventually start eating just as much of the same old stuff again and gain back all the weight you have lost? I know I have said that. So I'll say it again. If you just cut down on what you have been eating before, you will eventually start eating just as much of the same old stuff again and gain back all the weight you have lost. That's the way inspirational writing goes, you know. Repetition, repetition, the same thing over and over again. And that is the way your old eating habits have been, isn't it? The same old foods over and over again. And what has been the result? Fat.

      Fat! Fat! Fat!

      Cut it out.

      By now you may think that I'm a fanatic and want you to be one, too. Maybe. Maybe not. I am trying to turn you into a very committed person. If you are not absolutely determined to make this change, you won't make it. I am trying to help you. Put your mind to it. Do it. The rules are quite simple. Get off most processed foods, eat 900 calories a day until you reach your desired weight (when you are forced to break your diet or when you have a relapse, buckle down and start over again), and then increase calories until you reach your maintenance level, and stay there. The change to fresh foods will wean you off your old eating habits, and before long — a year or two — you will find that your new diet really does satisfy your reformed appetite.

      Yes, it will take years. But it gives you something to do, doesn't it? And if it is worth doing, so what if it takes years? You knew it was not easy before you opened this book. In fact, you know that it may be one of the hardest things you've ever done

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