How To Gain Weight
Vol. XI No. 4 - SUMMER/FALL 2000
From the Chicago Daily News Cook Book, published in 1938
From the standpoint of health it is just as important to prevent underweight as overweight. Malnutrition reduces resistance to disease.
Underweight is of much more importance in the child than in the adult. Perhaps the greatest reason for the desire of adults to gain weight is that of conforming to the “dictates of fashion”. Some folks are short and fat while other are tall and thin. Part of the fat ones want to get thin and many of the thin ones would like to get fat.
When good health demands it, this desire should be encouraged. When heredity indicates that thinness is the natural state, the desire to gain weight should probably be discouraged.
Children of slender inheritance may never be fat, but they can, in a great majority of cases, be well nourished.
In children, then, the chief fight is against malnutrition. In the adult, the putting on of weight merely means putting on fat which, in many instances, is unnecessary. However, those adults who, in reality are truly underweight will be improved in health by gaining weight.
In many instances, unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to make a gain in weight. There are two factors of importance in order to do this, just as there are two factors in losing weight, and they are the same two – diet and exercise. For the one wishing to gain weight, the output of energy in the form of exercise and work must be cut down, while the diet must be increased.
Here are six rules which have been suggested for cutting down on the output.
- Slow up, exercise less and learn to relax.
- Sleep more at night and take a rest period during the day.
- Ride more and walk less.
- Sit more and stand less.
- Choose only light forms of play and exercise.
- If possible, rest in bed for one or two weeks.