It's January and most of us are concerned about being fat after the over-consumption of the festive period.
Here are your best excuses for being fat: that you can use throughout the year, not just in January.
1. 'My friends are fat'. Recent research demonstrates that being fat is all down to who we mix with. We have these things called 'mirror neurons' which, a little like the mimicking of others that we do with our body language, lead us into a constant desire to mirror those around us (in order for them to feel wanted, for us to feel bonded, and thus to survive as a species... it's down to our evolutionary instincts, you see).
It means that if you hang out with fat people, you're more likely to be fat. Even if you hang out with people who hang out with fat people, you're more likely to be fat. Yikes. The same goes for unhappiness and a bag of other qualities. Choose your friends wisely. And if you can, encourage them to choose their friends wisely too. Dr. David Hamilton examines the whole subject in 'The Contagious Power of Thinking'. It's depressing. And the fact that it depresses you is more likely to make your friends more depressed too. You could go in for a process of 'friends cleansing': only sticking with people who are thin, healthy, balanced and sorted. But that would probably leave you with no friends.
So, in the meantime, just use this fact positively, as a great and scientifically-proven excuse for everything that you don't like about yourself, including 'I'm fat because I've got fat friends'.
2. 'Being fat is evolutionary success. Thin people are evolutionary errors'. Though being fat may cause a disturbance in our medium-term chance of personal survival, our ability to stuff ourselves and hold onto the fat reserves has significantly contributed to our survival as a species. Even though the chances of our starving to death are pretty slim nowadays, our bodies are programmed to expect starvation. It is thus very hard to get rid of unwanted fat reserves. We may not want them, but our survival instinct does. We are basically caught in a constant battle between our programmed instincts to be fat and our desire to be thin.
When the famine arrives, being fat is a great place to be, and increases your chance of survival. Until then, it's a bummer. Naturally thin people are evolutionary errors. And I hope that helps when you look at all the magazines full of thin people, and look at the scales in the morning.
So smile as you down another biscuit and know that you are a fine example of nature doing its thing: surviving.
3. 'It's the government's fault'. Given that we're wired to put on and then retain fat - but that this is not ideal for our personal survival in the current non-famine climate, then why doesn't the government do something about the food surfeit situation? We are faced with endless temptation, with the ability to eat just about whatever we want at any time of the day or night. Why not ration food again, to help those who can't help themselves?
Or, more naturally, let us eat what we want as we do now, but then have enforced periods of starvation, so we can use up the fat we've accumulated (for just such a purpose). On 'Starvation Weeks', supermarkets and restaurants would be closed, and biscuit sniffer dog patrols would roam the streets sniffing out people who were illegally eating. If anyone was caught eating, they would be barbequed in town squares and shared amongst the starving masses at the end of Starvation Week.
The rest. These are just the current Top 3 Great Excuses. The rest make for fascinating reading, and include 'It's My Genes', 'It's Santa's Fault, He's Such a Bad Role Model', 'My Metabolism Was Taken Out As a Child', 'I Once Went to the States', 'Everyone's Fat Nowadays, and I've Never Been One to Stand Out', and 'I'm Just Wearing a Lot of Layers Today'.
But those three should keep you going. Try them out and - if they don't work, and you still feel humiliated by some prejudiced thin-evolutionary-error-person - just reach for the biscuits.
You'll soon feel better.
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