Body Fat Is Bad

You know that old Valvoline ad, “oils ain’t oils”? Well, fat ain’t fat, or put another way, the big fat health message that we are pounded with every day that fat is bad – or more specifically, too much fat is bad – isn’t actually true.

And we have all these ways to figure out how much ‘too much’ is – like the scales, the BMI, the size of the clothes we wear… and as I’ve written about many many many times before, too much fat is really so subjective and there’s almost NO research to tell us exactly how much is bad, though we do know that very low BMIs are very bad for your health – that’s called starvation and it’s always been the biggest threat to human survial, right through our  history.

It’s only in the last 80 years or so that we’ve come to think of body fat as ‘bad’, and muscles as ‘good’. We’ve made having a lot of body fat mean that somehow we’re also ‘bad’ as a person.

Thing is, body fat is not only very useful, it’s also massively important to our wellbeing and our health.

As Glen Gaesser says in his you-must-read-this book, Big Fat Lies, “we have been thorougly conditioned to believe that when it comes to weight in general and body fat in particular, less is always better”.

Now there is “good” fat and “bad” fat. Visceral (or deep) fat, for example, that fat which is stored in our belly cavities and surrounds our organs. It’s generally considered to be ‘bad’ fat.

The average woman though, stores most of her fat on her hips and thighs – and that’s ‘good’ fat.

So maybe you can see that the location of your body fat is way more important to your health than the amount of fat, overall, in your body. Those fancy, pricey body fat percentage tests aren’t actually that useful for your health, because they’re not going to tell you where the fat is in your body. Even people whose bodies appear to be thin can have more deep fat than is optimal, so appearances aren’t anything, never mind everything.

Pear shaped women have fewer health complications than apple shaped women, because they store less fat around the belly and more on their hips and thighs.And it seems the body has its own protective measures, which makes sense – I can’t see how during our millennia of development, when our bodies learned to store resources to see us through tough times, that they wouldn’t also have devleoped ways to balance any risks – this is about survival, after all!

Dr Gaesser gives these figures from studies:

• the bigger the thighs, the lower the risk of heart disease – even if you have a belly as well
• even in men with bellies – fat thighs = lower triglycerides in the blood
• “mildly obese” pear-shaped women are only half as likely to develop diabetes as “nonobese” slender-hipped women
• large hips + small waist = lower risk of heart disease

It seems that fat cells in the hips and thighs are particularly effective at mopping fat out of your blood – massively important in our sugar-addicted culture.

Does this mean that you should sugar-up to grow the size of your hips and bottom?

Probably not – but it does mean that the drive to make your hips and thighs smaller can only be seen as a preference, not as a health-giving action. It’s always so interesting to me that hips and thighs are such a target for the weight loss industry – our round female hips and thighs define the average woman as female. Men have less curvy assets in these areas. The drive always seems to be to have the lean hips and thighs of teenage boys, at least if we want to be fashionable. Industries like liposuction have risen around this drive to eliminate this most female of characteristics.

One thing that has been bugging me recently are the articles about how dreadful it is that post-menopause, women may develop larger hips and thighs. But again, it’s body wisdom that we’re only just starting to understand.

That fat makes estrogen. Post-menopause, the ovaries stop producing estrogen. So the body switches over to making estrogen in the fat cells of the hips and thighs. Estrogen is a wonder-hormone running literally hundreds of processes in the body, like protecting us from heart disease, keeping memory and concentration sharp, keeping us happy, keeping all the parts of our body moist (like skin, joints, eyes, vagina!) helps maintain muscle and metabolism, and much much more!

Bet you didn’t know that your hips and thighs are the source of so much of your good health. Yes, you can slim them down with deprivation and wraps and over-exercise, and take the supplements for the rest of your life. Or, you can exercise for the joy of it to stay strong and fit, give up the idea that all fat is bad, and take joy in your health-giving, luscious, hips and thighs. I know that might seem impossible… if you want help, begin with the ten tips for loving your body – just signup on the form on the front page.

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