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 fatter!  The scales told me that.

This backing and filling and argument with myself lasted all through January and part of February.  It took me six weeks to get myself into the frame of mind where I admitted the truth of my conclusion.  I was no hero.  I didn’t want to do it.  I loved it all too well.  I was as rank a coward in the beginning as you ever saw!  It appalled me to think of restricting myself in any way, for I liked the pleasures that I knew I must forego.  However, when I got up to two hundred and fifty pounds I sat down and had it out with myself.

“Here!” I said to myself.  “You big stuff, you now weigh two hundred and fifty pounds!  In another year or two you will weigh two hundred and seventy-five pounds!  You are uncomfortable and heavy on your feet, and you are gouty and wheezy; and it’s a cinch you’ll die in a few years if you keep on this way.  You know all this fat is caused by an excess of food and drink, and you know it can be taken off by a reduction in those fatmakers.  Are you going to stick round here so fat you are a joke, uncomfortable, miserable when it’s hot, in your own way and in the way of everybody else, when, if you’ve got the will-power of a chickadee, you can get back to reasonable proportions and comfort merely by denying yourself things you do not need?”

All the old arguments obtruded.  See what I should lose!  Life would be a dull and dreary affair—­a dun, dismal proposition.  I admitted that.  On the other hand, however, life would not be a wheezy, sweaty, choked-heart, uncomfortable proposition.  I finally decided I would go to it.  And I did.

My method may be utterly unscientific.  I suppose it hasn’t a scientific leg to stand on.  Still, it did the business.  And I maintain that results are what we are looking for.  The end justifies the means.  I didn’t figure out a diet.  I had a dozen of them at home that had cost me all the way from two dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars each.  I didn’t buy a system of exercise.  I read no books and consulted no doctors.  What I did was this:  I cut down the amount of food I ate sixty per cent and I cut out alcohol altogether!  I carried out my argument to its logical conclusion so far as it concerned myself.  I didn’t give a hoot whether it would help or hurt or concern any other person in the world.  It was my body I was experimenting on, and I did what I dad-blamed pleased and asked no advice—­nor took any.