Extra Body Fat – A Profit Perspective

Extra body fat is often considered being an extra trouble. And it is as it brings lethargy and heaviness at one hand and internal congestion at the other, and thereby, inhibiting vital life processes giving rise to chronic ailments. Question is - if it were no good, why did nature design it?

Fat is our energy store. Plants are versatile in energy storage but animals, including humans, can store their energy mainly in the form of body fat. There is just a tiny amount that is stored as glucose or glycogen, bulk of energy is stored in the form of fat. There are two reasons for body to store fat - 1) food has always been uncertain in nature, sometimes a lot and sometimes scarce, the store serves for times when food may not be available. However, now time has changed and a lot of food is available (for humans). We have organized food in such a manner that there is an abundant uninterrupted regular supply.

Second, and perhaps the bigger cause of energy storage is body’s maintenance, growth and repair. Food handling is quite a complicated task – organizing, eating, digesting, absorbing, metabolizing, storing, using and excreting. The myriads of functions involved take away lot of body resources leaving very little for growth, repair and maintenance. Fat reserve is to occasionally liberate the body from the tasks around food and eating; and thereby, enabling it allocate more resources for growth, repair and maintenance. This is what happens in hibernation, hibernation is a rejuvenation exercise.

I myself keep thinking of accumulating fat so that I could temporarily liberate myself from eating and could go on long fasts. However, accumulating fat is as difficult for me as is losing it for some. Reason being if I have more calories I end-up doing more work at farm, as I so much like being physically active, it being driven by my primal animal instinct.

We can look at extra body fat from two profit perspective - 1) it can temporarily liberate from cumbersome tasks of organizing food, eating it, digesting it, absorbing it, metabolizing it, storing it, using it and excreting it. On having extra fat one could go on a food holiday; and simultaneously, and perhaps more importantly, keep becoming repaired, rejuvenated and renewed, both physically and mentally.

Second profit perspective is this that one could do more physical things. It’s like if you have more petrol in your car’s fuel tank you could go far distances, similarly if your fat reserves are good you could do lot of work, play, roam, walk, climb, dance, fight.

On fictional side is coming in my mind Chuck Palahniuk's novel ‘Fight Club’ which was made into a Brad Pitt starrer movie also. Therein fictitious Paper Street Soap Company was into making soap out of human fat from liposuction clinics. Our fat, like any other animal fat or tallow or lard can have other uses as well, but this is complicated as it requires one first getting it out of the body through liposuction.

Do you have any extra body fat?

‘Do you have any extra fat?’ Because if you don’t you can’t profit from it. ‘How to figure it out?’ It’s easy, and it doesn’t require a weighing machine. You need a measuring tape or just any plain simple thread. Size the thread to your height, fold in half or cut into two equal pieces. If the half or the piece is able to circumvent your waistline you don’t have extra body fat. It’s only those whose waistline is more than half of their height have extra body fat.