We humans as a race have been walking this earth in our present form for at least a few thousand years. And we have reached this form through millions of years of evolution. And the incredible success of our human race is no doubt our intelligence but also the several survival mechanisms of our body. A very critical one of those mechanisms is also the one causing us lot of problems and unhappiness. It is our body’s ability to efficiently store energy in the form of body fat!!
This is what it is. Your body fat is your energy reserve. And the reason any person can survive for several days without food. The mechanism of storing energy as body fat was very critical for our ancestors, who often had to go through seasons of feast and famine. They overate whenever they made a kill or a good harvest and stored the excess energy as fat. This excess store of energy helped them survive extended periods of not making a kill or that of famine. It worked wonderfully and the nature made sure we never got to continuously keep storing fat all our lives. Nature always establishes balance.
But then, we are intelligent creatures. Apart from surviving, we also innovate, invent and discover to make our life easier and easier. We tried hard and we succeeded to find ways to always have continuous supply of food. Now a days we are stuck between the excess of food and a very efficient energy (fat) storing mechanism. Top it with a natural tendency to overeat and a modern lifestyle which is getting more and more sedentary. We get a solid mix to create more and more overweight and obesity people.
Let’s understand this. We still need this mechanism to survive. Because we are intermittent eaters and we mainly get our food through few meals a day like breakfast, lunch and dinner. When we eat, we don’t use all the energy at once. Generally a very little part of it is immediately used. Our body stores the excess energy as fat. And then, till the time we have our next meal, the energy we require for any activity is pulled out of this stored fat. This process of storing and burning fat is regulated through a hormone called insulin as shown in the chart
The chart shows a typical fat storage and burning cycle throughout a day. The entire green portion is when we are in a fed state and insulin is helping to store it as fat. And the blue portion is when we burn fat for energy. When the green portion exceeds the blue portion we end up with more stored fat and we are overeating in general. Similarly we end up with less stored fat if the blue portion exceeds the green portion. And we retain the same amount of stored fat if both blue and green portion balance out.
That’s the limited use we have of this survival mechanism. It serves us best if we stay in limit with our overeating. It is important to enjoy life and have occasional overeating. But then we have to balance it with regular habit of eating just enough to meet our energy needs. We may also need to under eat for a while every now and then if we go overboard by overeating for a longer duration.