Sunday Story...Why I'm Fat

Sunday Story…

I am fat.  I have to face it…like all 2/3rds of Americans today I am overweight.   I am at least 10 pounds overweight and I have no one to blame but myself. I really need to stop kidding myself about this.  Sure, I have some abdominal muscle showing which should indicate a particular level of fitness and body composition.  But the facts are simple…over 66% of us are overweight and I count myself among them.  Even worse…1/3^rd or over 33% of us are obese.  The world health organization (WHO) defines obesity as a “BMI” (body mass index) of 30+, and overweight is 25+.  Mine is 24.8 but I am an athlete and as such my ideal weight would be about 10# lighter and a BMI of closer to 24.

Many years ago all the humans who walked the earth were fit and healthy and lean.  They were taller than we are today, had fewer cavities, enjoyed better health and had bigger brains.  So what happened?  Why are we, today, in the face of having more than enough food to eat getting fatter and fatter as time progresses?  You would think, in light of what we know, that we would be able to eat in ways that science tells us will make us even healthier and fitter.  But the facts are in…in the last 40 years we have gotten fatter and fatter, our health has gone downhill, new diseases have come about related to diet and we are generally in poorer health.  This just doesn’t make sense.  Or does it?

Imagine for a moment what a lion living on the savannah of Africa eats.  Meat.  They eat lots of meat and not much else.  We don’t see lions out foraging for a snickers bar or even sitting down to a nice breakfast of leaves and twigs.  Nope it is pretty much meat all the way.  The lion has developed this way over thousands of years.  He is programmed by evolution to eat what it is that he eats.  Imagine for a moment that we would try to turn our lion into a vegetarian.  I am just guessing but I am willing to say we would probably end up with a pretty sick lion. The thought of him being a vegan is chilling.

On the other hand let’s talk about cows.  Our happy cow living her life in a bucolic pasture, munching on green grass, chewing her cud and producing milk for her offspring, all of whom then eat more grass and get fat and happy.  Our cow has developed a digestive system that works perfectly when fed grass.  She takes grass and turns it into meat and milk.  It is a beautiful thing.  How about we start feeding her animal parts?  How about we ask our cow to start running down a deer for dinner? But she doesn’t have the teeth, the stomach acids, or the digestion to make animal parts into milk and meat.  She will get sick (by the way, this is why feedlot cows have to be given a regular diet of antibiotics to keep them alive).

Now let’s turn our attention back to us human animals.  What were we meant to eat?  How did we evolve to eat the foods we are eating?  The fact is we don’t really know.  Our pre-historic ancestors left no menus lying around for our anthropologists to decipher. There is a way to get some clues, however.  We know they didn’t eat cereal, pizza, or drink milk.  All of those things are fairly new developments.  And in anthropological terms anything in the last 10,000 years is fairly recent.

We didn’t eat grain or legumes.  In order to destroy the toxins the grain (a seed designed for one thing---propagation of the species) produces to protect itself we have to process the grain to make it somewhat palatable to our digestive systems. 

We didn’t drink milk or eat dairy products.  There were no domesticated critters yet.  And if you have ever tried to milk an animal that didn’t want to be milked, well let’s just wish you good lick with that shall we?

We didn’t eat processed fats, sugars…they simply did not exist for those humans.

The tools needed to process those foods did not exist until about 10 thousand years ago.  It was here that human civilization really began.  We could take seeds, plant them, harvest them, and process them and feed people.  And for the last 9,900 years grain has reigned supreme in the human diet. This allowed us to stay in one place because we had a constant food source readily available.  Then we could create cities and roads, and have traffic jams and start enjoying all the wonderfulness of the non-hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 

At the same time humans began to get shorter, have smaller brains and have more cavities.  It’s a small price to pay for a Starbucks on the corner, right?  Then about 100 years ago we began to industrialize our food system.  We introduced processed oils and sugars into our diets but even into the 1960’s we were still pretty lean.  The obesity rate was rising but not alarmingly so.  Somewhere about 1970 we were told to avoid fat…that eating fat was making us sick, causing heart disease, and causing havoc with our arteries.  So we all went on a carb-binge.  It was OK to eat cereal with a 30 gram sugar filled yogurt on top.  It wasn’t and our waistlines are expanding every year to prove it.  Even worse all those grain based carbs began to work their magic with our immune systems and digestive tracts.

We got sicker and fatter than ever.  And today I am fat.  I am fat because I swallowed the party line hook line and sinker.  And I will continue to be fat until I change my diet.  It really is that simple.

Now, those of you who know me already think I am a fringe foodie.  I don’t eat grain, sugar, legumes, or dairy.  The problem is simple.  I am not 100% compliant and that is where my last 10 pounds are hiding…in that glass of wine, shot of tequila, chocolate bar, and piece of cheese.  I may be 90% compliant but until I take that last step those stubborn last few pounds will remain with me.

I am going to get 100% compliant.  I am not willing to put myself in the overweight category anymore.  I will be the lean human machine I was created to be.  How about you?

Namaste

John

“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”

www.martialartsnevada.com

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