"Diet or Die" - The Dolly Dimples Story

 After posting my thread earlier re:   the lady who is aspiring to make 1,000 lbs., I got to thinking about a famous circus "fat lady" of the '50s that I had heard about as a teen once, named Dolly Dimples (nee:  "Celesta Geyer").  

 I decided to do a little research about Dolly, and came up with the following article on Wikipedia about her.  I had forgotten that, after reaching 555 lbs, (she was only 4'11") she suffered a near-fatal heart attack in the late '50s, and went on a strict 800 cal-a-day diet as a result, losing a Guiness world record (at least at that time) 430+ lbs. in one year.     That was a truly amazing feat, and remember this was in the pre-WLS era!    I have to admit that I don't know of any WLSers that had made the Quadruple Century Club in that short of a period of time.   Dolly then went on to write a popular diet book in the '60s, detailing how she lost her weight  --  "Diet or Die ".  I guess she must have been pretty dang good at keeping it off, too, as she then went on to live to be 80+!      She transformed what was a health-jeopardizing big-money career (one of her fellow circus fat ladies told her, "you ought to make $$s off of being laughed at, since people are doing it anyway"  ) into one in which she profited by gettting healthy.  That 's called making lemonade out of lemons!  

 Anyway, for anyone interested in reading more about Dolly:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wi****lesta_Geyer

 That was the first "diet story" I ever read.  One of the parts of her story that I never forgot was one of the fat ladies named Pearl.  Pearl weighed over 800 pounds and sat on a throne all day in the sideshow.  People would walk past and watch her sitting there. The throne was really a cleverly disguised toilet, as Pearl was constantly defecating.

The book is out of print now, but here is a picture from Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Diet-Die-Dimples-Weight-Reducing/dp/B0006BTZLI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1310214320&sr=8-2

 I wonder if that is her "circus friend" that she mentioned that they "buried from the back of a truck" because she was too big for a hearse?      Dolly said that experience, in part, it was spurred on her personal weight loss quest. 

  Thanks for finding the book and posting it! 

Wow, that is interesting.  I had not heard of these cases before.