We’ve got it all backwards — this dieting we go through at the beginning of each new year. For some reason, we seem to be tied to Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, and make resolutions to lose weight and get in shape. Yet at the same time, food magazines sport glossy cover shots of “hearty” stews, “stick to your ribs” dinners, and gooey calorie-laden desserts.
Dieting or gorging ourselves in winter belies basic human biology. Twenty-thousand years ago my ancestors were enjoying life in the freezing Alps (yeah, I sent my DNA into National Geographic for The Genographic Project). I guarantee you those folks were not dining on osso bucco and beef bourguignon, nor were they worried about how snug those animals’ skins were. In winter, they were hungry — in kind of a forced fasting. My ancestors bulked up in the summer and fall so they could literally last through the winter.
Today we do the opposite. In summer, we’re eating salads and light foods and then we start packing it on around Thanksgiving. In colder places in the U.S., people explain winter weight gain by not getting outside to exercise as much. But we can’t use that excuse in Charlotte. We may have a few “bone chilling” weeks — and then it is spring. My genes — and maybe yours do, too — seem to dictate holding onto each incoming calorie possible during the winter. And evidently my ancestors were successful at doing that. I am here, after all. So why do we think our genes can overcome thousands of years survival commands quickly enough to accommodate, say, a Super Bowl party?
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2010.
