The Secret Of My Diet

Stay away from coffee breaks and between-meal snacks. Candies and sweets are naturally taboo, as are sweetened canned fruits. You must be positive you want to lose weight or you will find yourself cheating. Drink one eight-ounce glass of water with each meal. Don't weigh yourself every day, but do weigh yourself once a week. If, after coming to the end of my diet, you want to lose more weight, repeat the last week of the regimen. Think thin and go to it. If you want to add exercise—naturally, only on your doctor's recommendation—so much the better. I, of course, always have to in training for a fight.

My average day in training is about like this: I wake up at 6 or 7, no set time, and judge the weather. Once in a while a dense fog settles in the mountains, and then I wait until the sun comes through before I go on my road stint. My objective is to perspire and lose weight while I'm strengthening my legs, and a damp fog would be detrimental to this aim. I may or may not have a cup of black coffee before I run, and I sometimes take a jigger of blackberry wine for energy. Of course, I take my sauerkraut juice first thing.

My quarters are separate from my staff; I get into action in the morning on my own. Dieting makes a person irritable. I don't mean I get nasty, but I am touchy and little things bother me.

Back from my run, I eat breakfast, still dressed in my road togs. My breakfast is usually half a melon and coffee (black), with a poached egg from time to time. Then I am put to bed by my trainers, Hiawatha Grey and Dick Saddler, and these fiends spoon-feed me two hot cups of tea while I'm wrapped and helpless in the blankets.

After my high tea I'm supposed to sleep, but as soon as the trainers leave I put on my tape machine and play jazz as I doze. My minor irritations go away and I can relax. To anyone on a diet I strongly recommend some outside interest. People have to find something to take their minds off the pangs of hunger.

I sleep for an hour or two and then I get into a hot tub, where I soak for half an hour. Next Saddler gives me a brisk rub, and Hiawatha fixes me plain gelatin dissolved in half a glass of water. I take that for instant energy, for now I'm ready for my afternoon workout.

Dinner is my time for fun. Any friends who have dropped by to watch me work are invited to stay. We cook steaks on the barbecue grill and tell jokes and talk fighting until the coffee is all gone and the sherbet is in my belly where it belongs. I am a sherbet fanatic—any and all flavors—and have challenged all comers.

When I retire from fighting I want to get very, very fat just once. Not for the sake of being fat, but to put away a mountain of mashed potatoes, a barnyard full of fried chicken, gallons of lemonade and sherbet, Herbert. But then, of course, I'll go back to my diet and stay in shape, because fat is a killer of men.

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