RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail Story
Benham column: Extra pounds may bring happiness
| Monday, Mar 19 2007 5:50 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Mar 19 2007 5:56 PM
A friend is trying to lose weight.
BAKERSFIELD.COM HOT TOPICS:
Loading Stories
Advertisement
This time he has an incentive. The company for which he works, the same company for which I work, is offering a $500 prize for the person who loses the most percentage of their body weight.
Lofty goal. We could all use $500. Five hundred bucks and 40 fewer pounds.
However, there's an upside to that extra 40 pounds. A recent study says that obese men are less likely to commit suicide.
Think of all the happy, heavy men you've known. Uncle John -- and I suppose many people have had an Uncle John -- comes to mind for me. He was not obese, that's a harsh word, he was just a few pounds over his playing weight.
When he wasn't worried about the world going down the tubes, Uncle John was happy. He was happy that you had come over for a barbecue. He was happy to be barbecuing sausage. He was happy that you were eating his barbecued sausage. He was happy that he had backed up his barbecued sausage with some marbled block steak.
With Uncle John, it was celebration time. Live life, love life and in order to do both well, it was important to keep your strength up.
Now, think about some of the most miserable, tortured people you know. Most of them are thin. Thin and hanging onto their thinness like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to an oar.
Should I eat this yogurt or should I not? The eating of the yogurt, which has fewer calories than sycamore bark, becomes a philosophical problem. Descartes could have written a book about it, and before he finished it, half of Europe would have starved.
Eat the yogurt. Eat the yogurt, but not before you've dumped a handful of chocolate chips in it and then dusted it with some fresh, coconut flakes.
The study, published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine, "reported that the men were 42 percent less likely to commit suicide than those at the lower end of the normal weight range." Scientists believe lower suicide rates may have something to do with producing more insulin and other hormones that impact mood.
Fat exerts a protective effect against severe depression. Higher amounts of insulin in the obese men may increase their levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood.
What scientists are trying to say is this: Life can be a bummer. However, when we're eating we're happy. Eating and hope go together like chocolate and a croissant.
When we're not eating, we are sad. Sadness leads to depression which leads to cliff diving.
We're depressed only when we finish eating. That's why dessert was invented. Dessert is another pause before the curtain comes down and the theater goes dark.
There is the slight problem of diabetes, heart disease and medical costs that are spiraling out of control because of people not taking care of themselves. Let's not talk about that because that's depressing.
The choice is clear: be thin and kill yourself or eat up and be happy right to the moment that the massive heart attack takes you.
This morning I had four lemon squares. Oh, were they good. I'm that many lemon squares closer to heaven.