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Eat, Repent, Repeat: The 1914 Diet Book That Feared Fat More Than Financial Crime

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Eat and Grow Thin: The Mandah Menus by Vance Thompson (1914)


Writers don’t usually advertise their weight struggles, but many have waged wars against their own waistlines. Virginia Woolf never took a second helping. Byron, terrified of his “morbid propensity to fatten,” lived off dry biscuits and soda water. Anaïs Nin merely nibbled. Franz Kafka, in his never-ending quest for bodily perfection, chewed each bite precisely one hundred times, per the gospel of nutritionist Horace Fletcher. It worked—too well. “I am the thinnest person I have ever known,” he lamented, presumably while gnawing on a single almond for two hours.

But few literary figures were as obsessed with fatness as Vance Thompson. A critic, novelist, and self-proclaimed victim of rich foods, Thompson published Eat and Grow Thin: The Mahdah Menus in 1914—a slender book about the tragedy of not being slender. He viewed fatness as life’s greatest horror, a curse that had snatched away talent, beauty, and even national prosperity. “One could write books, plays, poems on the subject,” he declares, and he very much did.

Thompson didn’t just dislike obesity—he considered it a moral failing, a gateway to doom. “There is a strange kinship between obesity and financial crime—almost all embezzlers are fat,” he asserts. His book is full of fantastical creatures: society belles, drowned in an ocean of “turbulence and tallow.” Actresses, once muses of “shining dreams”, now “wrecked on huge promontories of their own flesh.” Statesmen, who “cumber the earth, now mere teeth and stomach, as though God had created them only to show to what extent the human skin can be stretched without breaking.” The horror! The tragedy! The sheer sebaceous devastation!

This book is America’s first known low-carb diet manual, and it is gloriously unhinged. It was wildly successful—by 1931, it had reached its 112th printing, proving that America’s obsession with diet fads is as enduring as its love of forbidden foods. Like all diet books, it’s equal parts science, pseudoscience, and straight-up hysteria. Thompson’s plan makes Atkins look indulgent—fat is forbidden, and pork is outright excommunicated. Pigs, apparently, are too pig-like. The book lists an extensive index of “forbidden foods,” including dairy, pork, ham, bacon, beans, bread, grains, cereals, flour, rice, potatoes, sugar, and alcohol. Instead, one should feast upon all meats (except the filthy pig), game, seafood, eggs, fruit, and green vegetables.

Here's a typical dinner, as per Thompson’s gospel:

• Mussels Marinara or fish in season
• Dolmas (Mutton, Turkish fashion)
• Broiled Mushrooms
• Roast Fowl with Aspic Jelly
• Coleslaw (with boiled dressing)
• Stewed apples, with lemon and cinnamon flavoring

Enough food to fuel a tribe, yet somehow, the promise was weight loss.

Among Thompson’s colorful tales of the perils of corpulence is that of a Parisian banker-turned-embezzler who, upon fleeing to the countryside, embarked on a strict regimen of daily Turkish baths. The results were miraculous: “At the end of six weeks, his own wife would not have known him. The fat had sluiced from him like melted butter from a colander.” A triumph! A new man! Except, of course, that his transformation was so extreme that when he strutted back into town, the police arrested him on sight. “They did not know him; they arrested him simply because he looked as though he should be locked up—he looked like a man who had stolen a fat man’s skin and was running away in it.” When the detectives finally force-fed him carbs, he puffed back up to his previous rotundity, at which point they immediately identified him as the fugitive banker. A cautionary tale, if there ever was one.

But fear not—the Mahdah Method provides salvation. Promised to be as ancient as Galen and known to Avicenna, it is beautifully simple: “Eat the right kind of food.” And, for those who didn’t catch the nuance, “Eat the right food rightly prepared.” Dinners must be “scientifically composed” because “to the scientist, there is nothing so tragic on earth as the sight of a fat man eating a potato.” A grim image, indeed.

To fully grasp the Mahdah philosophy, one must inwardly digest the proposed menus, absorbing their wisdom like a lean and enlightened monk. The diet even dabbles in seasonality—consume more carbohydrates in winter, none in summer. Sensible? Perhaps. Deranged? Entirely.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a diet book without some delightfully snobbish social commentary. Thompson assures his well-heeled readers that the book is for them, lamenting that “a man at once fat and poor might find some of the dishes beyond his purse. He is to be congratulated, for he will lose flesh just so much more rapidly than his fat and richer brother.” Inspirational words for the calorie-counting aristocracy. But his most bizarre decree is, “Above all, don’t sleep too much.” Because rest, apparently, is for the plump and foolish.

Ultimately, Thompson’s magnum opus distills down to three main tenets:

1. The worst part of being fat is that it makes one ridiculous.

2. Eat less than you have been in the habit of eating; and sleep less.

3. The hostess has only to hand the book of menus to her cook and think no more about it.

A diet for the rich, the dramatic, and the eternally panicked, Eat and Grow Thin remains a relic of America’s long, proud tradition of diet fads—utterly mad, deeply entertaining, and a tragicomic snapshot of how our ancestors waged war against the dreaded “sebaceous sea.”

Here are two main career lessons inspired by Eat and Grow Thin:

I. Chew Your Opportunities 100 Times Before Swallowing.
Kafka chewed his food into oblivion, and while we don’t recommend his diet, the principle applies: don’t rush career decisions. Savor opportunities, analyze risks, and ensure they’re digestible before committing. The wrong job, like an ill-prepared steak, can be hard to swallow and even harder to get rid of.

II. The Smuggest Person in the Room Is Usually Selling You a Diet.
Whether it’s a miracle meal plan or a too-good-to-be-true business opportunity, beware of those peddling “one simple trick” to success. Sustainable careers, like sustainable weight loss, require balance, discipline, and a lot of joy. If someone insists you must only eat boiled lettuce (or grind yourself into dust for success), walk away—preferably toward a well-cooked meal and a job that doesn’t drain your soul.
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