Do you slink up to a pair of scales and peer about before nervously mounting them? Then you are obese. Once aboard, do you shake and jiggle the platform on which you stand and thus seek to deny and refute, by what you think is a little harmless fraud, the telltale figures on the dial? Then you are certainly obese.
For more accurate means of judgment, consult the weight charts on pages 182-5. Bear in mind that all such charts and tables merely approximate from general averages, based on factors of age, sex and height, what your weight should be. Unfortunately no account can yet be taken of different nationalities or considération given to the varying bony framework of each person. Despite these limitations, however, the chart will enable you to determine whether you are grossly over-weight.
If your weight exceeds by ten per cent or fifteen per cent the standard fixed in the chart you can still regard yourself as normal. All insurance companies accept as standard risks applicants whose excess is as high as twenty per cent. But if you weigh twenty-five per cent or more above what you should, by the standards of the chart, take heed.
Stop, look, listen. The time has come to share with yourself your neighbors’ knowledge that you are decidedly, undeniably, emphatically, fat.
If you are under thirty years of age you need have no dire fear because you are not in imminent peril. Despite this comforting fact, however, it is worthy of note that youthful habits of eating may persist to plague you in later life. So whether you be un1ler or over thirty it is well to watch your weight.,
The obese have very special reasons for appreciating the old axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is far easier to fore-stall obesity than it is to vanquish it after it is en-trenched. Don’t temporize. Draw the line today. If your weight goes beyond standard declare war and fight it out until the merest threat of obesity has made an unconditional surrender.
Although no one, whatever his tendency, should tolerate unnecessary fat, there are certain classes who should always be definitely on guard. If the members of your family are prone to over-weight, if a member of your immediate family has suffered from diabetes, if you seem disposed toward the diseases of the heart, gout, nephritis or arthritis, a special duty rests upon you to avoid fat.
You can well afford to make fat prevention and weight regulation or reduction a serious duty. You save money to take care of your old age, you buy insurance to protect your family against unexpected death, illness and disability, but too often you neglect a natural preparation for the battle of life or lightly ignore a vital factor in its successful conduct. Whether you are willing to admit it or not it is your obvious duty, therefore, either to avoid or to get rid of fat.