Thanks to Kara for pointing this article in our direction. It comes to us courtesy of On Fitness.
When something prevents the body from swiftly running, this can’t be healthy. A Body that cannot run fast is a handicapped body. Of course, there are also thin people who can’t quite sprint, either. But this is a poor argument in defense of the “fat can be healthy” movement.
If you take 100 slim adults under age 40, and 100 same-age adjusts who are 50-100 pounds overweight, and have them run their fastest for just 25 yards, you won’t see very many, if any at all, of the big group actually sprinting, but many in the slip group will. Running fast is one of the body’s most fundamental abilities; it’s not an athletic gift- it’s what nature has programmed us to do. But modern-day living has deprogrammed us.
Many very big people claim they “feel” healthy. But under what circumstances? Look at how easy it is to live in these modern, highly technological times, in which everything is done for us at the click of a button!
Think about it: We have remote controls for garage doors, tvs, even car doors! Machines clean our clothes and chop up our food. And instead of walking from point A to point B at the office to deliver a message, we now send it by e-mail. And how do we often get dinner? By driving up to the fast-food window. In other words, to get by in modern life, one need not physically exert himself.
So it’s easy, then, for a hefty individual to believe he or she is healthy. But what if that person had to do what man once had to do, in order to get dinner or simply survive- run across fields, climb, build shelters? What if our modern-day, “healthy and fit” obese people had to chop down a tree and build a canoe out of it? And then paddle for hours in the canoe? Okay, in a modern society, you’ll never have to chop down a tree and build a canoe. But don’t miss the point: Just because you don’t have to do these things, doesn’t mean you are fit and healthy!
Before the invention of cars, people had to walk everywhere, including up and down hills, carrying buckets of water or carrying kids (strollers do that now). The obese or even moderately overweight person would not last long under these circumstances of yesteryear.
And when the very heavy person eventually must exert himself, he pays dearly for it, such as passing out after walking for extended periods in the heat, or awakening with searing back pain the day after rearranging some furniture (though a thin person can also suffer these fates; but the overweight person is at a greater disadvantage).
