Dieting is very big business indeed. A great many people are overweight (Leaflet F10) and wish to get thinner to improve their appearance. Quite a few others are underweight and would like to put a bit of flesh on — for exactly the same reason! Very few are underweight for lack of opportunity to eat (Leaflet P07 covers Anorexia). People would envy your will-power for just keeping slim; to stay unnaturally thin means something much more powerful is at work.
If you have always been underweight your growth may have been subtly delayed as a fetus, at the stage when the cells of your metabolic organs were multiplying. If they failed to reach adequate numbers in the time available the power rating or capacity of those organs is permanently reduced, limiting your growth and stamina to less than your original potential. If that seems likely you can only accept it and cherish fully what you have. Be careful about pregnancy: good preparation is essential, well beforehand (M01). The commonest reason for being chronically underweight arises from the way you habitually react to stress (P38). Most people are eventually subdued by it into a submissive mood very suitable for digestion; this helps to explain how their over-eating tendency begins. Difficulties in life do not slow you down like that — you work harder at solving them. That puts your nervous system in a more anxious, active mood — quite unsuitable for digestion, stealing your appetite. Meanwhile you make matters worse by moving about further and faster than other people, spending much more energy than they do.
If you are overweight, you could use a little of this hyperactive character. One of your problems is a tendency to go cold, stupid and slow on a weight-reducing diet — you hibernate, like a bear. That’s a great asset for surviving a famine, but a liability when there’s too much food around. Dieting produces all the wrong results — instead of fat you burn off useful flesh like muscle, because in hibernation you need the fat to stay warm enough and survive. Nowadays you may need the fat for other reasons. If your body is polluted with poisonous chemicals like pesticides, you store them up in your fat out of harm’s way. The trouble really starts when you begin to lose that fat. Pesticide dissolved in it gets into your blood and upsets your metabolism, making you feel really ill. If that’s how dieting affects you try the cleansing diet (F09).
What to do
1. The same diet will correct overweight (F10) and underweight conditions, provided their fundamental causes can be corrected. Even if you cannot solve your basic problem, keep to these principles and accept the result.
2. Give yourself plenty of time to eat, and get properly in the mood for it. Make the meal a social event whenever you can. Chew every mouthful of food thoroughly before you swallow it.
3. Begin every meal with a course of live fresh salad — fruit in season, grated root vegetables or onion, fresh coleslaw or seed-sprouts (F15).
4. Avoid drinking during and just after the meal, since this makes digestion less efficient. Drinking before the meal is fine, but avoid coffee and strong Indian tea if you are nervy and underweight.
5. Breakfast: Your main energy meal, based on cereals. Use the muesli recipe (F16), including the condensed milk or fresh cream if you are underweight. Moisten with live yoghurt if you are convalescent, skimmed milk or water if you want to lose weight, whole fresh milk or fruit juice otherwise.
6. Midday Meal: Small fresh salad or fresh fruit in season, then wholemeal bread, whole-rye crackers or baked potato with light garnishes — yeast spread, boiled free-range egg. Spread your bread with cottage or cream cheese, nut butter, tahini or good dairy butter if you are underweight. Otherwise go for a low fat spread, live yoghurt or a little fresh mayonnaise, and limit yourself to one slice or two crackers — spread on the smooth side!
7. Evening Meal: Fresh coleslaw or salad, then any rich protein you may wish with a suitable light garnish. A wholemeal sauce or baked potato is a good and easy companion for vegetables, if you do not want meat. Add some anyway if you are underweight, and have cream with fresh or stewed fruit to follow, but sweeten them with raisins only.
8. Accept whatever weight this gives you, and learn to love it.