Your Power as a Woman: Diet, diet, diet!

 Good morning! I'm back into Alma Archer's 1956 book Your Power as a Woman and thought we would focus this week on D-I-E-T. If you ask me, no four letters of the alphabet can be put together to form a more miserable word. Having been a rotund, bookish grade schooler, I've been on some kind of self-imposed reduction plan pretty much since middle school, with varied results. That's almost 15 years of being hungry! I'm interested to know, in the pre-South Beach, pre-Atkins, pre-Duquesne, pre-health-smoothies days, how a woman with a couple extra pounds would best be rid of them. Without a mile-long list of health gurus (plus the internet) to choose from, how do you know what to eat and what to avoid?

 

Avoid becoming five or six times the size of your refrigerator, if possible. Why is this woman's head so big... How big must her body be?!

Archer starts out by reminding us that "Excess weight is probably the one most common obstacle to achievement of womanly attractiveness and power...and overeating is certainly the major cause of excess weight." Think of classic comfort food like meatloaf, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, buttered rolls... in the age of casserole cooking, where every dish was swimming in hidden calories and overconsumption was the rule of thumb by which you could gauge prosperity, you can imagine how difficult it would be for the overeater to keep themselves FROM themselves and exercise portion control. I'm getting near teary-eyed thinking about how delicious all that food sounds NOW. So imagine if little old me didn't have a good grasp of what a saturated fat is, for example...Archer is here to help with a 14 day plan for weight loss. Ya messed up, and ya ate seven too many pieces of that delicious Boston Cream pie. That's ok, because:

 Hey! The cocktail clique! So me! I'm not a pastry die-hard but I do find it difficult to lay off the starches, so I guess that part applies to me as well. Before the plan, we're treated to a list of calorie content in everyday food items. Look at how there's no double cheeseburger or pepperoni pizza here...the list presupposes that you're eating the majority of your meals at home, just too much at them!

 Again, no Wyngz, no Big Macs, just everyday food you could make in your house. Isn't that kind of interesting to think about, how much food fifty-plus years ago was made and eaten at home?

 There's another page of calorie counts, but the highlights are a Chocolate malted (460 calories...why....why....) and a Tom Collins high ball (300 calories), and that's probably all you need to know. Some caveats on calories:

So. How do we use this knowledge to create well balanced menus? I chose a few from the 14 day plan to give you a taste (ha ha):

 

 

 

 Considering fad diets of later years (the diet plan laid out in Victoria Principal's The Body Principal, however much I love Pammy from Dallas, is pretty much an endorsement for anorexia), I feel like this is a relatively realistic plan for weight loss. Were you surprised at how much butter is included in the diet menus? The key thing in Archer's diet seems to be to cut out super-sizing your portions and to watch your sweets. Good advice for any of us! And on the subject of comfort-eating:

 Way to be melodramatic! But I believe what she says is true, in that I've spent way more time in my life eating because I was bored or bummed out that I have because I was actually hungry. On the subject of alcohol:

 And some tips for dieters to make the program a little less difficult to adhere to:

 And if you mess up, don't skip the next meal to make up for it! How many times have I eaten way too much pizza and gone "Well, I just won't eat anything else today." Archer puts her dainty heeled foot down on you no good meal skippers:

 And how about you, readers? If you do diet, how do you choose a reduction plan that doesn't leave you in hungry tears at the end of the meal? Do you think the plan she laid out is reasonable for a two week diet, or do you think measuring out the four ounces of salmon you get to have for dinner is just cruel and unusual punishment? Most of all, what do you think of her harsh-yet-encouraging tone? I'm oddly inspired! Til next time!