By Richard Tardif
In 1918, American physician and health columnist Lulu Hunt Peters lost more than 50 pounds, and wrote a book titled Diet & Health: With Key to the Caloriestargeting American women. Peters confessed she lost weight by counting calories, and concluded that calorie counting was an effective weight loss.
Today considered one of the first “modern” dieting book to become a bestseller, remaining in the top ten from 1922-1926. Chemists knew of calories, with invention credits celebrating scientists such as Wilbur Olin Atwater and Nicolas Clément. Peters, however, is credited for popularizing the idea that we can become healthier knowing how much energy is in our food, and refraining from eating too much.
Basically,Peters suggested eating 1,200 calories a day from whatever food group you desired, and lose weight, but stay away from candy, which she extolled as the trigger to binge eating. Little did she know. To calculate your basic caloric needs, she recommended multiplying your bodyweight by 15 or 20 to find the magic number. If you needed to lose weight eat 200-1000 calories less and to gain weight do the opposite. Thus, we began counting calories.
Americans had never heard of things like calories, proteins, or carbohydrates. It didn’t matter. The trend was to stay slim, so, the idea was to not eat as much, but smoke and wear rubber.
Lucky Strike Cigarettes ran countless ad campaigns. Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet. Women were encouraged to wear medicated rubber to lose weight, with Dr. Walters famous medicated Reducing Rubber Garments, and you had your choice. Rubber necked garments, rubber chin straps and belly rubber, all guaranteed to rub away the fat with special suctioning power, advertised in Vogue.
In the 1960s, the vibrating belt became the fitness fad of the decade. This was a huge machine with a big, bulky strap that was to be worn around the waist. Turn it on, and jiggle away the fat.Has anything changed?
The answer is, no. Reese Witherspoon’s alleged “baby-food diet” was once all the rage, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s $200 “moon dust” infused breakfast smoothie, just some of the modern ways the marketing is done, today.
Just. Eat. Right.
Richard Tardif is a personal fitness trainer, author, and an award-winning journalist writing and teaching about health and wellness. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth about Fitness, challenges, surprises, and encourages you.
