Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

My mother being also overweight and wanting to ‘do like I did and lose some of this weight’, we regularly chat about it, share tips and magazine articles, etc. One thing that I have noticed, though, is that she also very regularly mentions that both of us are the same (i.e. we gain on weight very easily) and that she wish we didn’t have to cope with this curse.

The curse bit is where we disagree.

Quite some time ago (years ago, probably), I had already blogged here about how thin people who can ‘eat anything’ aren’t necessarily shielded from illnesses, high BP, high cholesterol, etc. just because they don’t gain weight, and that at least, the threat of developing diabetes or whatever else is a good incentive for me to do healthier choices in terms of foods. I think it’s time I amend this: not only is it a good incentive, it is also NOT a curse.

Yep. Not a curse. It’s a survival mechanism. And I get the feeling that in our society where ‘thin is in’ (gosh, I hate that expression!) and a size 0 seems to be the highest degree of achievement possible, too many people tend to forget this essential point.

The ability to store fat easily was never ‘given’ to us to make us miserable, but to allow us to survive long periods of famine, when food was scarce and we had to tap into all our reserves in an attempt to go through such harsh trials. I very much doubt that anyone actually had the time to pile on enough fat to really be considered obese as per today’s standards; a famine would come up and get rid of that fat sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, not to mention that we didn’t have as much control as we have nowadays on crops, how to avoid them being ruined by insects, etc. No matter what, those stocks of fat would be put to use, and by doing so, our bodies would be able to survive longer. The human beings who managed to perpetuate our race were more than often the ones who had the ability to ‘get fat’, rather than those who were always perfectly fit.

The only problem with this well-working machine is that we were not meant to live in an environment filled with processed foods and, more generally, immediate access to plenty of foods. In fact, even only 100 or 150 years ago, this was still the case. It is somewhat shocking to think about it for a couple of minutes and realize that it’s Man who has turned a perfect survival mechanism into such a curse–much like he has ruined many other things on this planet, but this is not a topic for this blog.

Could I live without this tendency to put on weight easily? Surely–who wouldn’t, given the current circumstances in our industrialized, modern civilization! Do I consider it a curse, though? No. It makes some things harder, okay, but as far as I know, I still have two legs, two arms, a head that is working, and the ability to choose what foods I put in my mouth. I could consider it a curse; however, to me, it would be akin to belittling myself and my body for what they are, and I do not function well when burdened with negative thinking.

And I also do not want to consider like crap an ability that, who knows, might actually save my life if one day I were to find myself trapped in a basement for ten days after an earthquake, or whatever catastrophe might be thrown in my face. (You never know, after all!)

Tags: genetics, pounds, weight