'Kenya Obesity Amendment Bill of 2007'.

It is high time that our Parliamentarians came up with a Weight-Loss Amendment Bill to counter the regrettable affirmative clause that allows fat to accumulate in our MPs body fat cells.

Most of our MPs and majority of Kenyans have become ‘shapeless’. If I had a cricket bat, I would literally hit hard doctors, nutritionists, psychologists, gym instructors and other self-made nutrition gurus for persistently misleading Kenyans on non-issues.

Research conducted in various US’ food research centers and Universities’ Physiology Departments, indicate that fats stored in the body can be made from any food component (carbohydrates, proteins or fats). Unfortunately, our ‘self-made’ nutrition experts only complicate and confuse minds of many with theories and hypotheses on how to lose weight and what type of fat is in your body and what to and what not to take in as food. All this is bullshit!

Physiologically, when food is eaten, it travels to the stomach and intestines. Enzymes break down the food into glucose, amino acids and minute droplets of fat. The fats then travel to the liver the fats enter the circulatory system, where they can be used for energy by many organs. Excess fats will be stored in the fat cells that are always in our bodies. When more energy is needed, fats are released. If the need continues, the fat cells will shrink due to loss of fats but the nucleus remains the same.

The shrunk cells, soon enlarge with an increase in the intake of fatty foods. Thus exercise and diet may influence the amount of fat lost, but most importantly fat cells and their nuclei determine how fat is lost or otherwise retained in our bodies.

While our ‘nutrition experts’ dwell on the types of fats that are externally acquired, they forget to relate that the same ‘foreign’ fats within our body’s fat cells determine mechanisms of external fat entry, its usage and genetic type of elimination. Such ‘experts’ only light out the fire without striking the match and leave many Kenyans to put out the bodily fire. Many Kenyans are thus left to seek solace, even through prayers and self-help books, to help lose their extra Kgs and weight in form of fats.

In the gyms and fitness centers, many blink open bleary eyes and even shuffle off to the changing rooms to get some sigh of relief. They avert their gazes from all mirrors as they step gingerly on their scales and glance down. Quivering needles and glowing digits deliver the bad news; ‘You ought to cut down on fats’.

Silence then surrounds the gym as music plays loud. Then a stern round of self-incrimination comes forth.

“Yes!, I really pigged out over the holidays and weekends, but my ‘Prophet-Instructor’ and ‘Prophetess-Nutritionist’, still assure me that their magical spurn would make me change from an ‘apple-pear’ bodily concoction’ to that of a water-melon and vegetable-carrot ‘saladism’, one quips.

Desperation only makes them all turn their eyes ceiling-ward with a grim voice resolving to continue fighting the fats physically before the latter wrestles them to hospital beds with fat-induced cancers of the colon, rectum and prostate, for the gents. For the overweight women, they run a great risk of developing malignant tumors of the ovaries and uterine lining and after menopause, of the breasts, apart from stoke and heart failure.

Many self-flagellant penitents, especially those living in Nairobi and other urban towns, always blowout weekends in gyms, pubs and fast-food outlets at the same time, except on the day they go for ‘a religious sermon and prayers from their health priests’.

As for Nairobians and our MPs, they mundanely bloat toward chubbiness with the avowal to shape up freshly made. Their pledges only end up being dourly renewed as they face the melancholy prospect of shedding unwanted Kgs lingers.

In Kenya losing weight is not only an overweening obsession but also the number one (1) frustration, even among models and those cat-walking as they head toward the fatty-celeb beauty crown.

As I point the ‘physiology pistol’ at your head. Many frustrated fatties have long been told that it is their own fault. That they eat too much and are lazy, with no will-power. Being overweight is a judgment that says you are weak and self-destructive. I hope you felt the fatty bullets!

Many perpetual dieters whose job is to battle against their bulges. The rich cart home low-calorie cheese, low-fat and skim milk as they stock refrigerators with diet sodas.

The fatties, visit kiosks stocked with cheap unhealthy soup and mutura (African sausage).Making the Kenyan society equally fatty as many indulge in gobbling nyama choma and binging booze.

For vegetarians, most have ugly bodies. They only earn that title as they take the ‘alternative cuisine’ as fitness centers, gyms sell a lot of their fitness cuisine in form of programmes for their clients. The only certain result is a thinner wallet and fat bodies.

Those determined to sweat off unsightly fat enroll in pricy health clubs to pamper their plumpness away. The very fat and desperate check into medical clinics and go on supervised ‘fasts’ or have surgery to decrease their stomach’s volume. But as quickly as the shillings and cents drop off, they begin creeping back on setting comfortably once again in their hips, thighs, paunches and other private body parts. Statistically, at least two-thirds of those who lose weight gain it all back. Only 2% can still flaunt svelter selves.

However, many of us are quite ready to make fun of fat people. Personally, I’m fat by again, muscular. But how comes no one makes fun of a drunk? Are fat people voluntarily fat to falsify richness and ‘better health’? Physiology proves otherwise stated.

Thus, though the proposed ‘Weight-loss Amendment Bill of Kenya’, we need to ‘review’ fitness and health ‘clauses’ of our minds and knowledge by defining obesity as a disease.

Our fat-laced Parliament needs to look at itself and re-define obesity as a disease.

Though, failure to lose weight is not a question of gluttony or immorality of munching food. At the same time losing weight permanently is an extraordinary difficult thing to do. Even the “Miscellaneous Amendments Act on Fats” would not pass for law to destroy all fats in our bodies unless we intend to dissolve our bodily Parliament for the house coffins.

With the pride that Kenya has “ the 7th (Seventh) wonder of the world “; I still wonder why many of us put fat and have trouble taking and keeping it off, even as we visit Maasai Mara as the fatty wild beast are drowned in the crocodile invested river. Like the fatty wild beast, many Kenyans carry a hefty social price and other earthly problems.

I remember being called a “tank” by some fitness instructor when I first trained in a gym, and to beat him to it , I yelled at him that he had developed ‘breast’ by having weighty intercourse with machines. In my clinic, I meet patients who become recluses after gaining extra weights. Luckily I tell them all, but softly. Some argue that I never mince words only ‘meat when I want to make samosas out of their money’. Some young lady once told me that she had weighing scale that tells her that she was attractive and would face myriad corpulent woes making her squeak for breakage

In fact marital discrimination can be blatant frustration come when one does not fit in a seat on a Volkswagen-Beetle or find the right size of underpants. The worst comes when you are told to withdraw a job application because you would be an assault to the eyes of the managing Director. This danger over overweight increases on a sliding scale as one grows not on none issues. It is like winning 3,000 M steeplechase race in the wrong direction. Though heading the opposite fatty way to receive the trophy is easy.

TRUTH ABOUT FATS:

According to research, being overweight is much a result of physiology and heredity as it is of behavior and environment, though the genetic influence is more subtle. It seems heredity is particularly influential in where fat settles. It determines the strategy your body uses to get rid of excess calories. Some naughty instructor once suggested ‘sex-aerobics’ for men having beer-belly profiles than to carry that unfair share of the health risk when on the act.

Physiologically, an adult body has anywhere from 30 billion to 40 billion fat cells, also kwon as adipose. The cells swell or shrink like sponges with the amount of fat inside them. These cells may become very small, contrary to popular beliefs they never disappear or die, until we are pronounced dead

Factually to an extent, we are all programmed towards being fat. Ironically, fat storage is useful and lifesaving, which is why it is jealously guarded by the body at various places in the body.

In all overweight people, the cells expand to hold more fat. Additional cells are found only when a person is at least 60% above the ideal weight for his height and age. Remember the body mass index (BMI) as catalyst for more frustration! With that around, there are no certain predictors of who will be fat or slim even if we refuse to bulge refrigerators with food or chase ‘mutura’ handlers away.

Some of our male MPs may be reduced to non-men if male corpulence was equated with performance status. Indeed, men too are expected to lean to walk the sexual talk.

Certainly, there is a paradox in our country, no matter where British Supermodels Ms. Naomi Campbell and Billionaire boyfriend, Flavio Biatore, would put up an International Modeling College to help Kenyan girls. Many, including models, suffer from bulimia nervosa (compulsive overrating followed by vomiting) especially when one is anxious about gaining wait. Others have anorexia nervosa (fear of becoming fat and refusing to feed) despite the fact that we have an overweight majority in our society including children, the elderly and the sick

Have you ever wondered why HIV/AIDS patients put on weight after taking ARV’s? Is it due to the fact that fat cells bulge out, become fatter, healthier and with life once again?

Kenyan psychologist need to explain to Kenyans why each of us all has a reason for overeating some of our resources that has precipitated political and tribal tension in the country. Why the political tension in the country. Why the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) and our political parties obsesses with sugar-laced carbohydrate fruits, ‘Banana and Orange’ as election tools? Were Kenyans politicizing their emotional problems through the ballot box during the referendum? And shall we do the same come December only this time around inclusive of the red-roses?

Psychologist suggest that many find that loneliness, anxiety and sexual conflicts( including politics) can be temporarily eased by food many are caught in this vicious cycle of food violence where depression causes overeating and overeating cause more depression.

For the fortunate few who are slim, believe that being fat prevents one from having to take risk. Fat Kenyans are presumed to be the prima donor of avoidance for them, food serves not only as nourishment but as escape, solace and sedative.

Many Kenyans, including MPs are virtually addicted to certain fattening foods and feel that eating can get them past life’s bumps and political crises. We are always anxious, jittering or depressed before indulging. Afterward, we feel peaceful, relaxed, calm and very sleepy, making our MPS be dead asleep during our budget speech in Parliament every fiscal financial year.

Sadly, whether we go to gyms or become physically aggressive during political campaigns, the truth remains that exercise works off calories very slowly. For fat is such a concentrated source of energy that it takes a long time to burn.

Still, exercise can provide a psychological boost by enhancing a person’s self-image and help dieters persevere. On the other hand, it serves as a distraction by giving us something to focus on besides food. It is a good adjunct to dieting though one cannot lose weight by exercising moderately, as advised by many doctors.

The challenge that Kenyans have to face is to take Kgs off but then almost inexorably put them right back on then go again to the gyms. What really counts most are hereditary and cultural forces that act on our bodies in relation to food.

Research also confirms that if you lose weight, adaptations come into play and which make it possible to regain that weight more efficiently. Our bodies are our most formidable enemies in losing weight and not only fats per se.

Another theory, is that our bodies preferred a certain weight at certain times. Like during cold weathers, when on specific medication and steroids, when body hormones are active or may be when we fall in love all over again, among other factors.

CONCLUSION:

These plateaus are often referred to as set points or settling points. Whether we are put on some diet plan, visit fitness centers, get depressed or yearn to be MPs, what counts most is how we contribute to shaping our individual fat cells in our bodies re-adapt to what we choose to take initially.

Reversing the trend, like going to the gym and which is not directly related to weight loss, is like climbing a mountain that is about to explode with magma. Your mirror will help you to understand the shape and size of your fat cells. The carrot-stick is yours to dangle as you try to re-define how fat is formed in your body.

Regards,
Mundia Mundia Jnr.