Do we all carry around a few extra pounds because we love to eat, don’t do as much exercise as we should, and watch too much television? We all eat too much fat, and since we don’t have to hunt down, kill, and slaughter our own food, we don’t exercise enough to burn up all the calories that we consume. Our own genetic makeup of hunter/gatherers now betrays us because of an overabundance of food, an overabundance of time, an overabundance of leisure, and an overabundance of opportunities for eating. So our sedentary lives are not the lives we were designed for, and we get fat. But it doesn’t all happen at once. First, your clothes don’t fit right. You’ve been eating a bit of barbecue, a super-size order of fries, a large shake, two hamburgers instead of one, a large soda with both sugar and caffeine, an extra snack before bed, an extra-helping of mashed potatoes and gravy, chocolate cake, cookies, extra whipped cream on your double-sugar café mocha, candy, and the rest of the food you eat you don’t even want to talk about. You know it’s bad for you, but you can’t help yourself, so you settle for buying bigger clothes, baggier shirts, and your waist-line continues to grow, and you have less and less energy, and you do less and less exercise. As you gain weight you are more willing to settle for more food and less activity. Yet we still buy more potato chips, more dessert cakes with cream filling, more sugary cookies, more prepared foods, and less fruit and vegetable, less protein, more sugar. The problem is simple: we are designed for lots of activity in combination with eating a lot because active eaters were assured of passing on their genes. Ten thousand years ago, those who did not eat all they could, died of hunger, and never passed on their genes. Now, those who have survived to spread their genes are still with us, but those same inclinations to eat as much as possible are now the same inclinations that will lead to obesity and death, diabetes, kidney failure and the like. Our bodies are meant to be lean and mean, and body mass index may be an indicator of continued good health and a long and happy life. But we keep the sugar producers in business by buying and eating food that is loaded with sugar. What could be more unhealthy than a meal at a local fast food chain that includes soda, fries and burgers. The protein in the burger is probably okay, but the rest you can chuck. Historically, sugar came into our diets when the colonies began to grow cane in the Indies. Up to that point, sugary foods were uncommon and prohibitively expensive, so over-weight people were uncommon, not rare, just uncommon. Going back to a simpler, more varied diet with a good dose of protein might be an answer as long as it is consumed in moderation. Perhaps moderation is the secret to most things in life. It goes without saying, though, that it is our lack of self-control and zero moderation which causes our collective waistlines to grow.