The Science of Being Well.

Have you already been acquainted to Wallace Wattles' "The Science of Being Well", published in 1910? I just finished reading it and I find it somehow speaking to me. Most of what the author is talking about is easy to understand, sticks to your mind and is also a nice change and addition to all the east-influenced spiritual or modern scientific approaches I've found myself surrounded with so far when it comes to health and nutrition. 

First half of "The Science of Being Well" deals with the author's philosophical and theological approach to being well, while in the second half he focuses on what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, how much to eat and so on (plus later on appropriate breathing and sleeping). One must not agree with everything and keep in mind that science in Europe was at a completely other level back then but taken en masse, a lot of it makes sense, I believe.

You can download it for free here or find an edited PDF version here. 

Some of the quotes which I wrote down for myself:

"To come into full harmony with the Supreme, you must purpose to LIVE to live to the utmost of your capabilities in body, mind, and soul. This must mean the full exercise of function in all the different ways, but without excess, for excess in one causes deficiency in the others. Behind your desire for health is your own desire for more abundant life, and behind that is the desire of the Formless Intelligence to live more fully in you."

"Wisdom is the most desirable gift that can come to a person, for it makes him rightly self-governing."

"It is essential not only that your every thought should be a thought of health, but that your every act should be an act of health, performed in a healthy manner."

"Whenever food is needed and can be used, there is hunger, and whenever there is hunger it is time to eat. When there is no hunger it is unnatural and wrong to eat, no matter how great may APPEAR to be the need for food.

Even if you are in a condition of apparent starvation, with great emaciation, if there is no hunger you may know that FOOD CANNOT BE USED, and it will be unnatural and wrong for you to eat. Though you have not eaten for days or weeks, if you have no hunger you may be perfectly sure that food cannot be used, and will probably not be used if taken. Whenever food is needed, if there is power to digest and assimilate it, so that it can be normally used, the sub-conscious mind will announce the fact by a decided hunger.

Food, taken when there is no hunger, will sometimes be digested and assimilated, because Nature makes a special effort to perform the task which is thrust upon her against her will, but if food is habitually taken when there is no hunger, the digestive power is at last destroyed, and numberless evils caused."

"Hunger is the call of the sub-conscious mind for more material to be used in repairing and renewing the body, and in keeping up the internal heat.

Hunger is never felt unless there is need for more material, and unless there is power to digest it when taken into the stomach."

"In most cases, some use of the will is required to form the habit of correct eating. The bolting habit is an unnatural one, and is without doubt mostly the result of fear. Fear that we will be robbed of our food, fear that we will not get our share of the good things, fear that we will lose precious time these are the causes of haste. Then there is anticipation of the dainties that are to come for dessert and the consequent desire to get at them as quickly as possible. And there is mental abstraction, or thinking of other matters while eating. All these must be overcome."

"A great success is the result of doing a large number of little things, and doing each one in a perfectly successful way."

"In order to think only of healthy conditions and functioning, a person must perform the voluntary acts of life in a perfectly healthy way. He cannot think perfect health so long as he knows that he is living in a wrong or unhealthy way, or even so long as he has doubts as to whether or not he is living in a healthy way."

"Air is largely a food. It is the most thoroughly alive thing we take into the body. Every breath carries life.

The odors from earth, grass, tree, flower, plant, and from cooking foods are foods in themselves. They are minute particles of the substances from which they come, and are often so attenuated that they pass directly from the lungs into the blood, and are assimilated without digestion."