How Mr. Banting Lost 35 lbs in 8 months even though he drank a lot of alcohol.

A story in three parts.

"Mr Banting was a fat man. At age sixty-five, the five-foot five Banting weighted in at over two hundred pounds.

'I could not stoop to tie my shoe...nor attend to the little offices humanity requires without considerable pain and difficulty, which only the corpulent can understand,' he wrote.

"Banting was recently retired...had no family history of obesity, nor did he consider himself either lazy, inactive, or given to excessive indulgence at the table.

"Nonetheless, corpulence had crept up on him in his thirties, as with many of us today, despite his best efforts. He took up daily rowing and gained muscular vigor, a prodigious appetite, and yet more weight.

"He cut back on calories, which failed to induce weight loss but did leave him exhausted and beset by boils. He tried walking, riding horseback, and manual labor. His weight increased. He consulted the best doctors... He tried purgatives and diuretics. His weight increased..."

To be continued. Tomorrow.