Fat Is More About How The Body Feels Than How It Actually Looks

It's more about how the body feels, than how it looks

- Meenakshisushma

Extra flab on your body is not just bad, it is irritating too. That jazzy t-shirt you have worn for months suddenly clasps your chest so tight that you gasp for breath when you take it off. Those extra kilos surely make you tired and all your joints creak. It is not only a cosmetic problem or a state of mind. It is an ailment that must be treated.

Doctors by profession, Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan unravel the mystery of obesity and say that self-devised methods like a crash diet will not actually help. Using a mix of historical, philosophical and practical examples, the book explains the concept of fat deposition in the body and how it affects the other physiological mechanisms.

An average weighing adult man has about 12 kg of adipose tissues, and each gram of body fat yields about 9 calories of energy. This much energy is enough to tide over a week of starvation. But if we are not starving, why are we hoarding daily?