Regardless of the circumstances, I believe that we as humans were never designed to stay overweight.

You may have been overweight for five years…maybe ten years.  You may have even been overweight for the past 50 years.  Even so, you were not designed to stay that way.

Overweight for a Purpose?

There are certain animals out there that are very “fat”, but for good reason.  Seals, walruses and polar bears, for example, carry very large amounts of body fat.  Why?  Because this is their body’s unique way of dealing with the cold, harsh environments that they live in.

That is why you never see a thin polar bear.

Whales are also known to carry large amounts of blubber.  The purpose is to provide insulation for them in the water, and to also provide an energy source since they pretty much swim all day long.

We humans do not fit in this category.

The Proof is in the Result

How can I confidently say that we are not supposed to remain overweight?  Well, it is because of the associated health issues.

Carrying extra weight has been associated for a long time to so many other ailments.  They include, but are not limited to the following:

• High Blood Pressure
• Stroke
• Diabetes
• Heart Disease
• Osteoarthritis
• Various Cancers
• Gallstones/Gallbladder Disease

But even aside from all of this, being overweight makes it so much harder to get along in general.  Walking a few paces becomes almost a workout in and of itself, making a person tired much quicker.  You do less because you tire much quicker than average.

Another Problem

To add to all of this, we are not nearly as naturally active as our ancestors were in the early days.  If we were, we might actually have use for a little extra fat tissue.  However, modern day lifestyles keep us far from the fat burning tendencies of our fore-fathers and -mothers.

How are we different from them?

• We drive everywhere instead of walking
• We sit down at work all day instead of doing jobs that require physical labor
• We buy food from restaurants often instead of preparing it ourselves
• We shop at the supermarket instead of gardening and hunting
• We sit down in front of TV, Video Games and Internet for hours

We do not need extra fat for this!

The Danger of Fat Acceptance

This leads to my last point.  There is a fat acceptance movement that has gone on for a while now that, while I understand where it comes from and think it has some merit, I also believe that it is very dangerous.

The fat acceptance movement encourages the overweight and obese to accept and love themselves.  This can be very important in our beach-body crazed culture, since everywhere you look, advertisements display huge muscles and rippling abdominals.  However, the encouragement to accept extra weight as a state of being for the long term is unwise and, in my opinion, endangers the health of multitudes.  There is far too much evidence that being overweight and obese correlates more strongly with decreased longevity and quality of life for us to say that it is fine to be too heavy for the sake of political correctness.

It is common with my demographic – african-americans – to associate being healthy with being overweight.  If you are thin, you are often encouraged to “put meat on your bones” by increasing your portion size and eating more unhealthy food.  Some folks might even say you look sick.  Oh gosh…this is not good!

Please here me clearly when I say this in closing…

You were not made to be overweight.

If you are currently overweight, you were not made to stay that way.

You CAN lose the extra poundage and regain a better state of health.

You can make that change today.

If you want to see my recommendations on losing weight in a healthy manner, visit my blog archives.  I sincerely believe you will find information that will help you.  The key is though that it is up to you to use the information.