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Wallace D. Wattles Ultimate Collection — Chapter-98: Lesson 2 The Physical Side of Health-Culture
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- Note: Work: The Personal Power Course, section 2 of 10.
Lesson 2 The Physical Side of Health-Culture Table of Contents All building and re-building of the body must commence with the digestive process. It is through the digestive system that the materials for new cells are supplied and prepared for use; so the first step toward health and a perfect body must be to see that the digestive and assimilative processes are properly carried on; that the right materials are supplied and that they are properly prepared for the constructive work. Just as you would commence to build a house by laying a foundation, so you must commence to build a healthy body by establishing a good digestion; the digestive process is the foundation of all constructive work. No matter what your symptoms are; no matter what your disease, or where it is located, you must begin your cure by establishing perfect digestion and assimilation. The first step in construction is to supply the builder with the right materials, properly prepared. What are the right materials? You know that there is a vast amount of discussion and disagreement as to WHAT we should eat, and perhaps you are confused and at sea between meat-eaters and vegetarians, raw foodists and cooked foodists, and so on; you do not know what to eat, and are almost afraid to eat at all for fear you will get the wrong thing. Let me lay down a proposition which will help you. Any of the plain solid foods which are in common use will be sufficient for you, if you have good digestion. If your digestion is good, and you have pure air to breathe, you can live and build a perfect body on whole wheat bread alone; on rice alone; on beans alone; on oats alone; on cornbread alone; on any one of a dozen other things. And on a combination of these ordinary foods, such as you may find on any working-man's table, you can live to perfection, having every element that nature uses in building the human body. Let me tell you in the beginning, what to do about all this discussion concerning calories, proteins,
carbohydrates, raw foods, nuts, fruits, meats, and so on; FORGET IT. Do not read any more of it, or listen to any more of it; drop the whole business. What you want is to get so that you will not have to carry a package of especially prepared foods about with you, but may go where you like, and sit down to any table, eat what is set before you, and get good results. This you can do, if you go about it in the right way. Your grandfather, who chopped wood or ploughed, or wielded a shovel for his living, did not think about food science; and the less you think about it the better for you. All such thought is fear thought. First, regulate your breakfast, a very light breakfast is better to work on. True, your grandfather always ate three heavy meals a day; and it is also true that he probably did three times as much muscle work as you are doing; and furthermore, it is true that he would have been far better on the light-breakfast or no-breakfast plan. At noon eat those things which are the staple foods of man, the world around; the things which the masses of people eat, everywhere. When the time comes for the usual evening meal, eat the same foods, in the same way, if you are hungry; and be sure that you do not eat unless you are hungry. Eugene Christian's “Corrective Eating” lessons (price $1.98, address New York City) are a liberal education on food combinations and diet. So much for the time to eat, and the kind of food to eat; now as to the manner of eating. If you do not wish to overeat, and if you wish to thoroughly digest and assimilate your food, you MUST fletcherize. True, your grandfather did not practice fletcherism; but it is also true that your grandfather lived under physiological, psychological, social, industrial, and sanitary conditions which were vastly different from those under which you are living. There are no exceptions to this rule, either; if you want perfect results, or even very good results from you eating, you must fletcherize. Fletcherizing consists in TASTING and CHEWING every mouthful of food until it is reduced to a liquid, so that it gets away from you by involuntary swallowing; and in holding a certain MENTAL ATTITUDE while you are doing so. Begin your meal with the food you are most inclined to eat, no matter what it may be; take a moderate mouthful, and taste and chew until it disappears. When you feel that you have eaten enough, stop; do not eat another mouthful, no matter who urges you, or how tasty and inviting the food. The mental attitude is simply one of cheerful confidence that the food so eaten will be perfectly digested and assimilated. This mental attitude is not based on theory, but on physiological truth. If you do not eat until you are really hungry,
and then if you eat plain food which you like, and fletcherize it, it cannot help being digested and assimilated. Hunger is a certain indication of digestive power; and where there is digestive power, food which has been chewed to a liquid will certainly be digested if you do not interfere with the process by fear- thought. Fear thought is fatal to good digestion; you cannot digest food well while you are thinking anxiously about the process of digestion. You MUST eat your food with cheerful confidence. To practice fletcherism, and to attain this cheerful confidence, some will power and perseverance are required. You will frequently catch yourself dropping back in into the old habits of bolting your food, and of wondering whether it is going to “hurt you.” Whenever you do this you must call a halt, and start again. When, by years of practice, you have formed a habit of doing a thing in a certain way, it is not easy to form a habit of doing it in the opposite way; but it can be done; and there is only one way to do it. That way is persistently, repeatedly and continuously doing it in the way you WANT to do it, instead of in the way you have habitually done it. Suppose a man has the habit of wearing his hat a little on one side and he determines to form the habit of putting it on straight. Twice in succession he takes thought, and puts it on straight as he goes out; the third time he finds, on getting into the street that he has it on one side; and he instantly takes it off and puts it on as he wants to wear it. So, day after day, he makes a point of instantly straightening the hat whenever he finds that it is on one side; and by and by he has by this continuous auto -suggestion formed the habit of THINKING of himself with the hat on straight; and he will never put it on the side again. Take notice that your success or failure in all things is at stake in this one matter. You are taking this course of lessons because you wish to become selfcontrolling; you wish to become master of your own destiny, and to rule over your environment, instead of being ruled by it. How can you expect to control your environment unless you can rule yourself in the manner and method of eating? Right here, on the adoption of the no-breakfast plan and fletcherism, you win or lose the whole battle. If you do without your breakfast a few mornings, and then begin to nibble a cracker, or take a bite of toast; or if you practice fletcherism for a week and then begin to grab and gobble in the bad old way, I honestly advise you to go not further with these lessons. Do not try to make any demonstrations in mental science until you can control yourself in these simple matters. The amount of discomfort you experience in taking up the no-breakfast plan will depend on your mental attitude. Until quite recently physiologists taught that a
man could not live longer than ten days without food; and in consequence, hundreds of people who were deprived of food starved to death in from six to ten days. Within the past decade, however, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that a person whose mind is properly trained can fast for thirty or forty days with little loss in weight, and often with no apparent diminution in strength. This proves that the people who have starved to death in ten days or less have died because they had been trained to believe that they MUST perish if they went beyond that limited period without food. If you believe that way, you can experience all the distressing feelings of incipient starvation in going without your breakfast; or by confidently expecting the opposite, you can do the hardest work in the forenoon, “on an empty stomach” without the least discomfort, but with an actual gain in power over the breakfast eater. This you can prove to be true by giving it a thorough trial continuing long enough to get mentally adjusted to the plan. Aside from the above, the physical requirements for good health may be summed up in a paragraph. Breathe pure air, especially when you sleep. Open your windows WIDE both in summer and in winter; pile on the bed clothes if you need them, or sleep in warm clothing, but have PURE AIR. Bathe as often as necessary for perfect cleanliness; do not take cold baths unless you enjoy them. Get a little all-round exercise of some sort every day. And that is all. You do not need to work hard, or do strange or unnatural things in order to be well. You do not have to swallow drugs, or live on outlandish and freakish bills of fare. You do not have to “assist nature” or interfere with nature, or to do yourself violence in any way, externally or internally. Good health is a perfectly natural thing, and no unnatural practices are necessary in order to get it and keep it. The cure of disease is a work of nature, and not a work of art. Breathe pure air, keep clean, and get enough outdoor exercise every day; if you desire to correct and develop bodily beauty, as you should, use Walter Camp's “Daily Dozen,” phonograph records to be had at any store. For the coming month, then, concentrate on these practices; remembering what you learned in the first lesson - that you CAN do what is required of you, and that if you DO what is required of you, you will certainly get what you want. These laws have worked perfectly for thousands of others, and they will certainly do so for you. Do not allow yourself to doubt, worry, or get into the electrical state of mind; but maintain an attitude of calm confidence which leads into the magnetic state. Do not be discouraged because you find yourself frequently slipping back into the old practices; each time you do so, take a new
grasp upon yourself, and keep right on; and by the time you practice the next lesson, which will deal with the mental side of health culture, you will have made great progress, and will be ready for another advance. Special Postscript Mr. Towne and I lived according to the no- breakfast plan for over twelve years. We gave it up some two years ago in favor of a very light breakfast - a cup of coffee, one or two whole wheat germs and an orange or stewed fruit. We find that a very light breakfast enables us to command our mental energies promptly every morning, whereas with no breakfast we were sometimes slow getting started. We have come to the conclusion that it is better to eat less and eat it three times a day. Of course where one has some digestive trouble the nobreakfast plan will often prove a great help. But for the ordinary individual who is fairly active we believe in the morning - “sparker” - and-two- additional- meals a day and advise you to take Mr. Wattle's advice, on this one point, with a grain of salt! ELIZABETH TOWNE