Were Cave Dwellers Ever Fat?

In our mind's eye, we see our ancient ancestors as they have been depicted in paintings, stories, films, and scientific recreations. Small, wiry, hairy figures surrounding a huge beast, poised for the kill.

Do we know if that picture is really accurate?

We do know, from skeletal fragments that have survived, that they were definitely smaller than present day human beings. We can surmise that they were wiry from the lifestyle they pursued: irregular availability of food and long hours of daily hunting. We can assume that women started to gather plants, grasses, fruits, and seeds to provide an alternate source of sustenance to the men's only intermittently successful hunting efforts.

We have only vague timelines on when tribes started to move out of caves and into shelters they made themselves. We can only guess about the invention of cooking pots, an enormous advance from simply an open fire.

As the race became more domesticated, the variety of food expanded and therefore the availability of something to eat became more assured. Eventually, civilization sparked, agriculture was born, and eating became a process of selection and choice rather than mere consumption to stay alive. It was at this juncture, we can posit, that individual's weights started to differentiate, depending upon personal choice, the wealth or strength to obtain extras, or the physical demands of one's occupation.

What did our cavemen forbears bequeath as their legacy?

Underfed and overactive, they willed us a body that still thinks we dwell in the primordial forest. Suddenly cut back on our intake of food and the alert is sounded through the nervous system and organs of our prehistoric physiology. "Famine coming, famine coming" our bodies shriek and immediately our metabolism slows to a crawl. The body attempts to hold onto its fat like a Paleolithic hunter grasping his animal skin against the elements.

In the very architecture of our bodies: tail remnants, vestigial organs, and a primitive metabolic system, we carry the seeds of our own weight difficulties.

To work with our bodies, rather than constantly fight them, we need to recreate the world in which our bodies developed. While we cannot participate in a primeval hunt, we can repeatedly, over a long period of time, consume only limited calories so that our bodies don't have to worry about getting enough food, but process the little they do get rapidly and efficiently.

Our little friends, the white rats in the laboratory mazes, have proven over and over again, that consistent undereating is the pathway to good health and longevity.

For all they did for mankind in the dawn of history, the cave dwellers deserve our thanks and our respect as do the bodies they left as their testimony.

What ungrateful abuse we heap on them when we allow ourselves to grow flabby and fat, desecrating their gift and nullifying their efforts.

Virginia Bola is a licensed psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic. She specializes in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. The author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a free ezine, The Worker's Edge, she recently published a psychologically-based weight control e-workbook, "Diet with an Attitude" which develops mental skills towards the goal of permanent weight control.

She can be reached at http://dietwithanattitude.blogspot.com

In The News:

A mysterious 'continuously active' object known as a "Trojan asteroid" has been discovered in Jupiter's orbit, making it the first known object like it.

As the world attempts to contain the coronavirus pandemic, India, Pakistan and a number of countries in East Africa are also battling invasions of desert locusts.

Though there is no known scientific cure for COVID-19, another potential candidate started clinical trials this week, as Novavax began to inject volunteers in Australia.

Countries across the world, including the U.S., are in various phases of reopening, but concerns of a so-called "second wave" of the coronavirus pandemic have cropped up. A new study out of Singapore, however, suggests that COVID-19 patients are not infectious 11 days after getting sick.

A mysterious inflammatory syndrome tied to COVID-19 that has been reported in children is now also turning up in young adults in their early 20s, according to news reports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week is warning people of an aggressive rat problem in the U.S. stemming from a decrease in food waste during the coronavirus pandemic.

Stormy weather is threatening to delay SpaceX’s first astronaut launch.

The first astronauts launched by SpaceX are breaking new ground for style by unveiling hip spacesuits, gull-wing Teslas and even a sleek rocketship with a black and white trim.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and several state health departments have been reporting COVID-19 diagnostic tests and antibody tests as one grand tally, rather than keeping their results separate, The Atlantic reported.

SEATTLE -- A baby gorilla was badly injured at a Seattle zoo on Saturday when he was caught in a skirmish between his family group members, zookeepers said.

Were Cave Dwellers Ever Fat?

Weight Loss Weight Loss