Thursday, 3:26 p.m.
June 14, 1984

Dear Bond,

Guess what?

Today I jogged "The Hill" two times without stopping!

Big deal, huh? Well, it is to me. Your old man is getting lean and mean.

Anyway, let's get started. First of all, I want to briefly review what I have suggested to you so far.

1. I have suggested that you do one hour's worth of road work every morning right after you get up for six days a week.

2. I have suggested you eat three pieces of fruit every day.

3. I have suggested you eat a large bowl of some bran type cereal every day.

Now, let's go from there. What else should your daily diet consist of? Well, for one thing, you should eat a lot of vegetables. What I suggest is that you get yourself some kind of baggie or plastic container and every night before you go to sleep I suggest you cut up a bunch of new veggies and put them in the container and then put the container in the refrigerator. Then, in the morning, when you are ready to leave the house, you can grab your raw veggies and take them with you to munch on them all day.

By the way, don't listen to all that garbage that says you should not eat between meals. You should eat between meals. In fact, six small meals is a lot better than three big ones. Actually, what is best is to have a little nibble whenever you get hungry. And this is a good way to eat your vegetables. Just carry your container with you wherever you go and eat some whenever you get hungry.

Incidentally, this is a habit that will go a long way in keeping you from feeling tired because it will tend to keep your blood sugar level at a more or less constant level.

WARNING! Don't depend on your mother or anybody else to buy or cut up your vegetables for you. You should, instead, develop a tough independent attitude.

You see, when you depend on others you give yourself an excuse for failure. "It's not my fault if she forgot to buy my vegetables." And so on. Don't set yourself up like this. Depend on yourself.

O.K. So far, we've got you eating fruit, vegetables and a bran type cereal. What else? Well, one thing else I think you should do is drink one large glass of non-fat milk every day. This will give you your calcium, some protein and some other good stuff.

And, what else? More protein, of course. As I said, you'll get some protein from your milk but it won't be nearly enough. You should also have at least one serving of some kind of lean meat or fowl.

Hamburgers are fine too.

Go easy on eggs. Two or three a week is plenty. They contain a lot of cholesterol and that's the stuff (along with fats) that can clog up your arteries.

Here's a couple more good ideas. (1) Buy yourself a box of bran flakes and mix two or three heaping tablespoons full into your cereal or whatever. (2) Get some protein powder. You can get this at most any health food store and I now believe it is a good idea (especially for a growing boy) to add some protein powder to his diet every day as "protein insurance."

What else should you eat? Actually, just about anything you want. I think it is a bad idea to ever forbid yourself to ever have ice cream or a soft drink or whatever. Just go easy and use a little common sense.

But don't worry. You see, if you keep up your road work and eat all the foods you should eat every day you won't have much room (or much inclination) to load yourself up with junk.

Let's take a break. I'm going to stop writing in a minute or two anyway because it is time for mail call. You know, Bondo, I've been thinking. I figure it will take me about one hundred letters to teach you the basics of what I want you to know. This should come out to between 500 to 1,000 legal pages of writing and these pages will form the core or nucleus of the book I want to write.

After I get this first part done I intend to take notes from various good books on exercise, diet, selling by mail, etc. and then, at this point, I should be able to sit down with all these letters and notes and then outline the book I want to write. After that, I'll write the first draft of the book. Then, after that, I'll review everything all over again and then write the final draft. I figure my timetable for the book to work out roughly like this:

1. Letters to Bond .................. 3-months

2. Notes from other books ........... 2-months

3. Outline .......................... 1-month (maximum)

4. First draft ...................... 2-months

5. Final draft ...................... 1-1/2 months

6. Polish ........................... 1-1/2 months

Total ... 11-MONTHS

Remember - these are very rough estimates. Actually, it is my goal to have the book finished after about ten-months of solid work which means I should (hopefully) be done by middle of next April.

We'll see. But one thing is true. This is the best place to write and get healthy I've ever been. I seem to get more productive every day.

Maybe, I'll have to commit some new federal crime every couple of years in order to get my books done!

Just kidding. Just kidding.

Strange. We usually have the mail by now but today it is late.

Oh well, I'll just keep waiting.

I was interrupted by mail call and now they are having "count." Count is simply when they count us to make sure we are all here.

They do this often.

Whatever. I was about to say let's get back to business. Now that I have (hopefully) got you doing your morning road work and eating more or less properly, I want to talk about other exercise in addition to road work.

Actually, I don't think I have to say a lot right now because you are probably doing just fine at Questar.

As I keep saying, I'm just warming up right now and I'll cover exercise in more detail later. But anyway, right now, I just want to say that I want you to concentrate on developing your arms.

All you really have to do are presses and curls. You know, I don't think it is desirable to have a body builder's body. Women, in general, are not attracted to to the exaggerated development of body builders and I personally don't like this type of physique either.

I think a man looks best (and I think most women would agree with me) when he is lean an hard - not bulging and overdeveloped.

However, I do think it is a good idea to spend enough time to develop strong muscular arms.

There are two reasons for this. First, of all, it is useful to be strong. Secondly, I think women are attracted to lean, hard men with strong muscular arms. And, thirdly, from a prison point of view, just having big arms can keep you out of a lot of trouble and I'll discuss this in more detail tomorrow.

Bye for now,

                                       I LOVE YOU AND GOOD LUCK!          

                                       Gary
                                       4:37 p.m.