So far, we have discussed body building subjectively. Now we are going to gather up all facts and line them up into a daily regime. We are going to place foods and food combinations where they will effect the most good, and give room to health hints and habits.
Be assured that this will not take all of your time. The children will not have to be shipped off to grandmother, nor will you have to explain to your boss that your services are uncertain. Life will go right along in its accustomed groove. But where there was waste, there will now be efficiency. Where there was tiredness and inertia, there will now be energy and enthusiasm.
Compare yourself to a business corporation. If the head of any business firm finds the ,institution is losing money and prestige he looks around for leaks. Sometimes he calls in an efficiency expert, and then there is a great upheaval. Old workers who have outgrown their usefulness have to go. Employees who lack ambition and pep are replaced by “live wires.” Everything is done to install economic efficiency, that will result in profit where there was loss. Every penny spent is made to count in an alert, competitive enter-prise. Briefly, the business that was failing because it was carrying an unproductive load, is stripped of everything but the essentials and given the elements for success. It be-comes a healthy business.
That is what you are doing with your body. Your mind is the efficiency expert, and the Master Body Building Regime is the economic system the expert will use. You are iming for health and competency to ward off failure. You are not going to change your way of living any more than the business man is going to stop manufacturing his product and take up some other line. But you are going to employ agents that bring profit in health and vitality. You are going to dismiss whatever stood in the way of your success.
There are foods provided by nature that are to the body what bricks are to the house. They build the structure of the entire physical bodybones, muscles, cartilages and flesh. These foods come under Group 1 listed in another chapter. We will call them foundation foods. The best of these are:
Almonds Pecans Walnuts Certified milk (for children) Eggs Mushrooms Kidney beans Lentils Avocado pears Fresh butter Cheese Fish Fowl Peas (dried) Beef Lima beans Lamb Navy beans
Now we want to have a good, strong foundation. In fact, we have to have it. But we don’t want the foundation of our house ex-tending all over the structure. Bricks are all right in their place, but they do not belong in the bed-room, and they cannot replace plumbing apparatus for instance. There are other materials that must be combined with the builders.
These foods, because they make solid material, are heavy and congesting, or acid-forming unless you combine them with some fruits and fresh vegetables to create alkalinity and help to remove mucus and inflamed conditions. When so combined, these heavy foods become valuable and necessary body builders. Remember that whenever an over-amount of these heavy foods is eaten, congestion is caused, and eventually rheumatism, gout and high blood-pressure are the results. These protein foods are so concentrated that we must not overeat them.
Next we come to Group 2, the fruits and vegetables that combine with the builders to reconstruct any part of the body. A healthy body requires both Group 1 and 2. Group 1, eaten alone, will clog the system. Group 2, eaten alone will eliminate or tear down. The combination of the two build and repair.
THE BEST FRUITS Lemons Raspberries Limes Huckleberries Grapefruits Strawberries Oranges Cranberries Pineapples Currants Peaches Gooseberries Cherries Cantaloupes Apricot Muskmelons Plums Honeydew melons Apples Pears Blackberries Watermelons Tomatoes
THE BEST VEGETABLES Celery Carrots Spinach Lettuce Endive Asparagus Swiss chard Dandelions Parsley Onions (baked) Beets Green pepper Peas Cucumbers (un-peeled ) Cabbage (raw) Cauliflower String beans Artichokes Summer squash
Some schools teach not to combine starches and acids. If this were prohibited, we could not eat the simplest of foods. Apples and car-rots, for instance, contain both starch and acid. Do not be misled by such theories. When the body is clean and the blood chemicalized, many combinations formerly giving. distress are easily digested. This does not mean, how-ever, that we can disobey basic laws of food chemistry and not meet the consequences.
We eat vegetables for their mineral con-tent. Never pour off the liquid in which they have cooked. It contains the most valuable part of the vegetable. Eat at least one raw salad a day. Never use vinegar. The best dressing is made of Wesson or olive oil and lemon juice in equal parts, to which you may add a little honey and vegetable salt. This is a splendid food.
The brain is composed of 75% water and 25% of solids. Eighteen per cent of the solids are oil compounds. It is necessary that we get sufficient oil foods to feed the brain. Raw egg yolks and orange juice is excellent. In case of extreme nervousness, drink lemon juice and oil, half and half. Remember that oil taken without acid fruit is fattening.
Vegetable salt contains in food form (not inorganic) the important chemicals, such as iodine, iron, phosphorus, derived from dehydrated vegetables.* This salt in combination with Group 1 and Group 2 foods, creates an abundance of high powered vitamins. Vitamins cannot be bought in bottles or yeast cakes. They are living processes and must be created in your own laboratoryyour stomach and small intestines.
When we consider Group 3, we find the process perpetuators. They are the starchy foods and natural sweets. Their function is to prevent oxygen from remaining in insoluble combination with the minerals during the process of energy release.
This is an important function, but when carried too far, causes congestion and faulty elimination. All people eat too many starches, because most refined food is composed of starch. The highest protein and building foods, such as nuts and beans, contain 50%; starch. This is natural starch, not refined and dead. In Group 3, the best starches are:
Baked potatoes Rye or whole wheat bread Whole rice Noodles (whole wheat) Spaghetti (whole wheat) Macaroni (whole wheat) Sweet potatoes Cake, whole grain wheat Cookies (whole wheat) Shredded wheat Triscuit Wheatena Cracked wheat Steel cut oatmeal Whole rye Barley Corn Bananas (ripe) Hubbard squash Pumpkin
The average person should not eat more than one piece of brown bread or one potato at any meal. Cereals are heavy starches which are best eaten sparingly by adults. The natural sweets of Group 3 are:
Honey Brown sugar Maple sugar Molasses Dates (dried fresh) Figs (dried fresh) Raisins Prunes Candy (made from natural brown sugar, not white or sugar) Canned pineapple is or wholesome, for this is put up ripe on plantations
All dried fruits should be unsulphured. You can tell sulphured fruit because it is light and pale colored.
Do not eat many starches and sweets if you want to build a firm body. Always eat an abundance of Group 2they make for alkalinity and health.
Group 4 foods are the fats and oils. These are also builders, lubricating the body and giving health. More of these are needed in cold climates. Vegetable oils are more healthful than animal fats. Those wishing to re-duce can eat sparingly of these or, if salad oil is used, a little more lemon added will help balance the fat producing element.
Learn to take the juice of one lemon in water first thing in the morning. This stimulates the liver and intestines, forming an internal cleanser.
The folllowing menus are suggestions how to combine all the necessary elements in every food group. You may follow these menus or make up your own combinations. Once a day you must have a Group 1 protein food, or builder to repair the wear and tear of your body. With this Group 1 food you must combine your Group 2 energizers, or fruits and vegetables. And as the last item eat just a little of the Group 3 foods, the perpetuators, or starches and sweets.
BREAKFASTS
Those who must have coffee with their breakfasts should be sure to prepare it freshly and not drink coffee that has been standing for hours. Such coffee does real harm.
Whenever you are not hungry, omit Group 3, or eat fruit only. If you want to reduce safely, omit Group 3 and eat sparingly of Group 4.
The ideal breakfast, and one that supplies plenty of pep, is:
One or two raw egg yolks with a little honey and a pinch of vegetable salt beaten up with the juice of two oranges. This is a perfect combination for any one wanting to build a strong’ body, and can be taken twice a day. It contains the chemical elements of which the body is composed.
Those who like breakfast foods should know that ninety percent of those advertised are absolutely foodless.
Cooked cereals, in order to be easily digested, must be cooked slowly. Those who are inclined to be overweight should not eat cooked cereals.
When you have eaten a nourishing, easily digested breakfast, lunch can be light and eaten for the sole purpose of supplying your system with the very necessary mineral salts and vitamins. You may not be hungry, but it is wise to break the long interval between breakfast and dinner. If you are hungry three or four hours after a good breakfast, lunch provides a splendid opportunity to combine a good building food with the energy-producing and alkaline-creating living food elements your body is always craving.
On page 88 are sample luncheons which will give you an idea of how to make correct food combinations. In eating for health, you want to take advantage of every occasion offered to work in health foods. Lunch is adaptable to this purpose, because it is a meal where most of us enjoy new and attractive dishes on the menu. Use as many of the health foods as you can, and follow this out-line as a general guide for food combinations.
When not hungry omit Group 3. Have a raw salad or glass of orange juice. Those wishing to reduce cut out Group 3.
Dinner should be well-balanced and substantial. It should have plenty of variety and an abundance of alkaline-forming and acid-forming foodsthe former predominating, of course. You want builders, but you also want those silent helpers that will work for your benefit all night long. You eat dinner with the realization that there are many hours be-fore another meal, and that the functions of your physical structure are best performed when you are relaxing, mentally and physically. For this reason, it is vitally important to preserve the proper balance between the foods you eat at this meal.
You will see from the sample dinners that follow how all the building foods are surrounded by alkaline foods which will neutralize the body acids the builders create. This is the ideal way to eat meats and starchy foods so that they will perform the maximum amount of good.
Vegetables and fruits predominate in the following dinner menus. This illustrates the principle that promotes health. You can make up your own combinations along these same lines.
Here in America fruits and vegetables of practically every variety are obtainable all the year round. It is an easy matter to obtain the proper amount of vitamins and energy. If you have difficulty in getting your family away from the old way of eating, you can start in by giving them larger salads and an extra vegetable. Also, see to it that you have fresh fruit on hand for every meal. The more fruits and vegetables you can persuade your family to eat, the more natural their appetites become, and sooner or later they will ask for wholesome foods they neglected before.
Many people drink water during meals. Instead of water we should drink a glass of lemonade (1 lemon to a glass of water and a little honey) or a glass of orange or grape-fruit juice, along with our food. Drinking plain and ice-water with meals is a bad habit, as it prevents the food from being thoroughly digested. Fruit juices, when taken with your meals, not only contain an abundance of minerals and vitamins, but have fifty percent living water. They help to digest the heavier foods.
Growing children should have all the fruits and vegetables they want. The best building foods for children are nuts, almonds, pecans and walnuts. Every growing child should have a handful of nuts a day, combined with some acid fruit.
Children suffer from an overabundance of denatured foods, such as white bread, cream of wheat, oatmeal, and some of the denatured dry cereals on the market, pasteurized milk, white sugar, candy, cookies, cake, doughnuts, unripe bananas, mashed potatoes with heavy gravies and meats. These devitalize their young bodies and brains. Give them living foods.
By cutting out all starches and especially white sugar and milk, giving the children orange juice, nuts, one egg yolk in juice of one orange, some raw foods as lettuce and raw carrots, and in addition some fresh vegetables, adenoids and enlarged tonsils have disappeared in from six to ten weeks.
All children need plenty of fresh air and sunshine as well as an abundance of the foods that have absorbed these life-giving proper-ties. Statistics show that in such states as California where life is lived more out-of-doors in the sunshine and fresh air, children grow taller.
We have covered all of the eating habits ,we should form, and now we will consider the health habits in general.
The most important of these isas we have said many times beforeto establish a daily eliminative habit. VVhen we eat correctly, the bowels take care of the elimination of waste matter. But there are obstinate cases of congestion and constipation acquired through wrong eating that have to have special attention. It is sometimes necessary to resort to the enema to wash out wastes. Put a teaspoonful of salt into warm water and retain the water for a few minutes.
Ordinarily, one-half teaspoonful of cleansing food taken occasionally will help in any case of constipation. But remember that you must attend to this function every single day of your life.
Exercise must not be overlooked in establishing health habits. We give plenty of exercise to our limbs, but the neck and abdominal muscles are frequently neglected.
The neck is one of the most important points of access to the entire body. Neck muscles are an important feature in correcting the action and function of many parts of the body. All connections, passing from the head to different parts of the body must pass through the neck. Food, air and vitality depend on this passage. Vital currents passing from the brain go through the neck on their way to the functioning and sustaining organism of the body. This exercise is one of the best:
Sit erect so that the body does not, move. Now turn the head slowly toward the left shoulder and move it slowly across the back toward the right shoulder. Do this three or four times. This exercise should be executed very slowly, counting to 40 or 50 for each turn. Whenever you hit a sore spot, the bending and stretching is all the more important.
For weak abdominal muscles, use this corrective exercise:
Lie flat on the back, tense abdominal muscles by drawing abdomen in toward the spine. Then relax muscles, tensing abdomen again. Do this from five to ten times morning and night.
The third daily health habit is bathing. Creative intelligence has given the body thou-sands of tiny pores, through which poison can be eliminated as in perspiration. Unless these pores are kept alive and active, and free of congestion, a healthy body cannot be maintained. Never neglect your daily bath. If you want to further aid your skin in its function, take an ocean salt bath. Ocean salt water contains many of the chemicals required by the human body. By bathing in the ocean the skin is chemicalized. If ocean bathing is impossible, one pound of sea salt dissolved in a bathtub half filled with warm water is a good substitute. Massage the whole body while in the water, remaining in it from twenty minutes to one-half hour. For best results, take this bath every day.