NED WAYBURN SHOW GIRLS, FOLLIES OF 1922.
HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT
To get rid of superfluous avoirdupois is one of the necessary steps to beauty. A ponderous actress has a limited field. Certain character parts, a few vaudeville acts, a singing turn, or a burlesquing of her own abnormality (if she has the personality to carry it off with), and there her availability for stage purposes ends. But you cannot dance and waddle at the same time. "It isn't done." If you aspire to be the kind of stage dancer that the public demands and that we produce in our courses, you will have to submit to diet and exercise, the only coin of the realm that will buy physical beauty and perfect development. There is no other way. Medicines for this purpose are dangerous, because they contain poisons, like arsenic and mercury. Make up your mind to either abandon all hope of a dancing career, or to faithfully follow the prescribed routine of proper exercise and non-fattening foods. If you continue to take into your body the foods that build fatty tissue, no exercise alone will dispose of the excess fat that is sure to result. While our exercises in the studio do help greatly, they cannot entirely correct a basically wrong condition unless supplemented by proper diet. And diet alone is not sufficient, either; you must have the exercises along with it.
DIET TO DECREASE WEIGHT
You must partake of no soups, nothing that is fried, no gravies. The only meats that you will be permitted to eat are roast lamb, lamb chops, broiled or boiled white fish, or white meat of chicken or turkey; no other meats of any kind, no other fish of any kind.
Vegetables. You may have any green vegetables, especially plain spinach, carrots, string beans, lettuce, celery, onions, sliced tomatoes, never any stewed tomatoes or beets. But you can have beet tops. Radishes are hard to digest.
You are not permitted to have any pastry, and by that is meant pie, cakes or cookies; no candies of any kind; no ice cream or ice cream sodas, no sarsaparilla or ginger ale, no liquor, no smoking, no cigarettes. You are not to take any liquids while having your meals.
You are not to partake of whole milk, cream, or white bread. Use little or no sugar or butter. The only kind of bread that you are permitted to eat is the whole-wheat bread, gluten bread, or whole rye bread. You may take stale bread toasted. Gluten bread is good when toasted.
You are prohibited from taking coffee. You may take very weak tea—very weak—but there should be no sugar in the tea, nor should there be any cream in it. You may have a slice of lemon in your tea. Lemon juice can be squeezed on the lettuce instead of using sugar or rich dressing. Vinegar on the lettuce or spinach, and plenty of it, is permissible.