Your body evolved in an environment that was low in carbohydrates and fat, and any food collected required physical effort. It is designed to put on fat in good times to improve your survival chances when there is a shortage of food.

So the fact that your body puts on fat when food is abundant is not a bad thing ... if you are a hunter-gatherer. Due to a high level of oestrogen it is common for women to begin to deposit fat cells on the lower regions of the body (e.g. thighs and buttocks) after they enter puberty. This is because it is necessary for women to have a critical amount of body fat in order to maintain the menstrual cycle and to be able to conceive.

Our evolutionary history is one of varying periods of famine and plenty, and given this environment, those women who were able to store surplus energy as fat were also the most reproductively successful. The extra fat stored on the body is considered attractive to men and other women when it creates the classic curved female or hourglass (gynoid) shape.However, extra fat alone is not attractive if it does not create this hourglass shape:

This ability to store fat is very useful where the food supply may be erratic at times. Fast forward to the modern world where we arrive at supermarkets in cars and can buy as much fat and carbohydrate as we like, then go home and lie in front of a TV. No wonder we put on weight, but is that extra weight unhealthy?

A recent analysis of three large, national surveys in the US showed that when you subtract the effects of smoking, alcohol, age, race, and sex from the death statistics of overweight people there was little difference in death rate between the overweight and the rest of the population. In fact, some statistics show that overweight people have a lower risk of death than the rest of the population. Given that cachexia (the wasting away of muscle tissue), is associated with premature death, especially in the elderly, it is no surprise that carrying some extra weight isn't so bad.

It is not the fat on your body that is unhealthy but the distribution of that fat. Recently, Researchers looked at data from almost 360,000 Europeans and found that men and women with the largest waists had around twice the risk for premature death as those with the smallest ones. Where you store your fat is even more important than what you weigh. The study found that the ideal waist measurements were less than 34 inches for men and less than 28 inches for women. Every 2 inch increase in waist circumference increased the risk for mortality by 17% for men and around 13% for women. Other studies have shown an increased risk of stroke as well.

So basically from a health point of view you need to reduce your body fat from around your waist but your overall weight is not such a worry from a health perspective, only a beauty perspective.

Why is this? Studies of male and female perceptions of various body parts have shown that both men and women find a protruding abdomen to be the most unattractive body feature. For females especially, fat deposits in areas that disrupt the Waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) lead to a decrease in beauty perception by both men and women. The Waist-to-hip (WHR) ratio is calculated by measuring the circumference of the waist and then comparing it to the circumference of the hips. According to the National Academy of Sciences, the WHR for healthy, pre-menopausal women is generally between 0.67 and 0.80, and for men between 0.85 and 0.95

Men and women are constantly scanning each other (especially men) and the evolved template in our brains compares your body shape to an ideal that has the highest potential for fertility. So if your fat deposits destroy the gynoid shape, that is, the typical female hourglass or egg-timer shape, then beauty suffers.

It was also found that women with a WHR of 0.7 were perceived as more attractive than women with a WHR of 0.8 and a WHR of 0.8 was seen as more attractive than a WHR of 0.9 (this figure is the ideal for men so if you have the shape of a man and you are female it won't be good for you from a beauty perspective). A WHR of 1.0 was seen as the least attractive (this is where your waist and hip measurements are the same).

Other studies found that normal weight figures were preferred over underweight, who were preferred over overweight figures. Support for the idea that the distribution of bodyweight determines attractiveness can be shown from the fact that overweight women with low WHR's (hourglass shape) are considered more attractive than slim women with high WHR's (a more cylindrical shape). It doesn't matter if you are overweight as long as you retain an hourglass shape.

So, if you have extra fat on your body and you don't have an hourglass figure then you are going backwards in the beauty stakes and it will only get worse as you age unless you adopt a good lifelong diet and exercise plan (see www.electricphysique.com). Even with this you can end up with areas of fat on your body, which are very resistant to removal. This is where cosmetic procedures like liposuction can be invaluable. They are not a good treatment for obesity but are valuable for overweight people whose weight has remained constant for many years. The procedures are great for problem-areas of fat retention that if removed will improve the body contour and bring you closer to the hourglass shape and a greater level of self-esteem and beauty.