How do we
become fat?

THE answer is very simple. By having more fat in our body.

And how do we get all that fat in our body? Again it is simple. Eating more fat! That is true in the case of most people. There are some rare exceptions of course. Rare things being rare, we will not consider them here.

If we drink more water than we need, our kidneys will push out the excess water from the body. Unfortunately, we have no such efficient mechanism to remove the excess energy we get from our food. If we had, we could have eaten as much as we liked without ever becoming fat.

So what does our body do with the excess energy? As it cannot be thrown away, the body stores this excess energy in any convenient place. Fat is the most concentrated form of energy and so the body converts the energy into fat to save space. If that energy were to be stored as carbohydrates or proteins, we would have been unimaginably fat and ugly-looking.

The conventional method of weight reduction is dieting. If we understand the principle behind dieting, we can actually eat full meals and yet not gain weight. We could even lose weight without dieting and starving.

The secret of smart dieting is in cutting calories without reducing the quantity of food.

We get energy (or calories) from carbohydrates, proteins, fats and oils.

Fats and oils contain twice as many calories as carbohydrates or proteins.

Fats and oils have 9 calories per gram compared to carbohydrates and proteins, which have only 4 calories for every gram. The average modern day diet contains sufficient fat to give us 40 to 50% of the total calories we need. If we reduce the fat content in our daily food by 10%, we could eat 30% more food — and still not be fat.

Combine it with a little exercise, and you could easily get rid of that fat.

The difference between fat and other sources of calories is more than just the 9 and 4 calories per gram.

If the excess calories come from carbohydrates or proteins, only one percent of those calories would be deposited as fat in the body. Rest of it is used to digest the food, to absorb it and then to convert it to fat. But when the excess calories come from fat itself, a cool 98% gets deposited as fat.

Look at it in a different way.

It is impossible to get excess calories from mere carbohydrates and proteins. And, the inefficient way in which our body handles calories courtesy of proteins and carbohydrates makes it almost impossible to get fat on carbohydrates and proteins alone.

Let us see how we get fat from our food. And, where we become fat.

Butter, cheese, almost all the cooking oils and oil seeds are superlative sources of fat. So are chicken and beef and pork. Egg-yolk and mayonnaise are also sheer fat. Organ meats like brain and kidney contain not only loads of fat but also lots of cholesterol.

Ground nuts and coconuts have more oil in them than we can imagine. Pastries and sweets contain more than reasonable quantity of fat.

The game plan for a low calorie (or low fat) diet is fairly simple.

Reduce or cut out whatever contains fat. A predominantly vegetarian diet will go a long way in keeping the fat intake down to a bare minimum.

A good mixture of cereals, pulses legumes, vegetables and fruits — with an occasional helping of either baked or boiled fish — is the ideal food. Fish contains only moderate quantities of fat and could be safely eaten — in moderation. But one has to be careful about cooking — in order to avoid fat.

Fried fish is a big no. For that matter, anything fried is just the same. Beef, pork and poultry are definitely out. Fresh fruits and leafy vegetables contain very little calories and could be eaten in almost unlimited quantities. Ice cream, French fries and cheese are taboo with a capital T.

There is no difference between rice and wheat as far as calories go. It is a matter of taste.

Roots and tubers like potato and tapioca contain mostly carbohydrates and very little fat. But fry them and they turn into devils.

Fruits like bananas contain complex carbohydrates and no fat at all. Fruits are great eating and quite filling.

It takes just a little experimentation, ingenuity and imagination to cook any thing for a low-fat diet.

Even if we are not over-weight and fat, a slight reduction in weight will help us minimise the possibility of heart diseases, diabetes and to some extent, cancer, especially of the bowel.

More than all these, it will help us feel fine and healthy — and look fit. Do not forget to add some moderate exercise to this scheme of things.

Even the strictest diet without any exercise will not help us reduce weight.

Happy and healthy eating!

Baaji Kuckoo