I went over my food habit. I was accustomed to eating a big hired-man's
breakfast--fruit, coffee, eggs, waffles, hot bread, sausage, anything
that came along; and I heaved in a lot of it--not a little--a lot! I
didn't eat so much at luncheon, but I ate plenty; and at night I simply
cleaned up the table. I wasn't so strong on sweets and pastry, because I
usually drank a few highballs during the day, and highballs and cocktails
and sweets do not go well together--that is, the man who takes alcohol
into his system usually does not care for sweets. Beer was one of my
long suits too--Pilsner beer. I did like that!

I looked this food habit squarely in the face. I impaled the drink habit
with my glittering eye. I knew I was eating about sixty per cent more
than I needed or could use, and that I was drinking a hundred per cent
more. I knew that nothing makes fat but food and drink. I knew excess
of food will make any animal fat and I saw I had been eating freely of
the most fattening kinds of food. I knew beer and liquor were made of
grain, and that grain is used to fatten steers and cows and pigs. I
refused to adopt a diet like any of those unpalatable ones I had
experimented with, but the remedy was as plain as the cause. It was
simple enough if I had the nerve to go through with it.

Inasmuch as an excess of food and drink make an excess of fat, it follows
that the reduction in the amount of food will stop that fat-forming and
give the body a chance to burn up the excess fat already formed. That
was my conclusion. Mind you, I reached that conclusion before I made any
of my arguments; but I didn't want to admit it as reasonable or logical,
for I hated to give up the pleasures of the table and the sociability
that came with the sort of drinking I did. I was trying to find a way
out that would be easy and comfortable. And all the time I was getting