Love your love handles - they may stop you getting a cold

For the past 20 years we have witnessed a hate campaign against body fat.
We’ve been bombarded with messages telling us to beat the bulge, shift our love handles and banish our bellies.
As a result, if you stopped 100 people in the street, around 90 per cent would say they have too much fat and would happily lose all of it.

 

Fat releases around 300 chemical signals - we are nowhere near understanding what all of these signals do, but we do know that they are important

But fat is a beautiful organ — and one that is essential for our survival, as recent research has showed.
A study found that slightly overweight people have a six per cent lower rate of premature death from all causes than people of ideal ‘healthy’ weight.
Even those who are mildly obese have no increased risk.
The research, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, analysed data from more than three million adults.
The U.S. team behind the research suggest that a small amount of extra fat may provide extra energy to fight off illness, or help people recover from injury.
Until 20 years ago we thought fat was simply the body’s storage dump for the excess calories from that extra biscuit or piece of cake.

 

But then we started to look at what was coming out of fat — not just what was going in.
This showed that far from being a passive lump of tissue that simply makes our thighs wobble or hips widen, it is actually crucial for a multitude of processes throughout the body.
Astonishingly, fat releases around 300 chemical signals — we are nowhere near understanding what all of these signals do, but we do know that they are important.
For example, some signals seem to mobilise the cells of the immune system, and are vital for fighting off bugs and infections.
This is why very slim people appear to suffer more colds and bugs, and super-fit athletes are more susceptible to infection, so have to take extra care of themselves.

 

Although models are envied by millions, taking a look under their skin may change your mind

Many of these fat signals also seem to be crucial for fertility, especially in women (women with little body fat sometimes stop having periods and can also experience problems conceiving).
Too little body fat can be just as dangerous as too much: people with lipodystrophy, where their body fat wastes away, suffer very similar health problems to the very obese, such as heart conditions and stroke.
Of course, most of the population have fat in excess.
Yet it is not that fat is bad; it is just that we have too much of it.
It’s like having a very good friend. We like to keep them close, but pull them too close and the relationship could potentially go sour.
And there are some places in the body that are better than others when it comes to fat storage.
Although women dislike big hips and bottoms, these are some of the best places to store fat. Somewhere not so healthy is around the organs.
A small amount of this ‘visceral’ fat protects the organs from damage, but too much can lead to them being squeezed, which affects their function.
The characteristic beer belly in men indicates a high amount of visceral fat and is a ‘red flag’ for heart disease and diabetes.
But the worst place to have fat is inside the organs — so-called ectopic fat.
When it’s inside the muscles, liver and pancreas, fat makes it incredibly hard for these to work properly.
And although this is seen in people who are obese, it is also seen in very skinny people — particularly fashion models.
Although these lithe beings are envied by millions, taking a look under their skin may change your mind.
Models often lose weight through diet alone, without any exercise, because fashion designers and photographers don’t like the muscular definition that exercise brings.
But keeping thin through diet alone seems, for some reason, to trigger organs to store fat inside the organs.
Exercise is the best way to lose this ectopic fat — and all types of fat, which reduces the strain on your organs. Dieting alone won’t do this.
Our fat is a thing of wonder — we just need to remember to love it in the right way.