The TOFI Tribe

Everybody has them... The friends that just seems to magically be thin. While you and I have to watch every single thing we eat, and spend hours at the gym, these people can eat whatever they want. They can gorge on double cheeseburgers and french fries, down milkshakes without a care, and trade their gym time for a double feature at the movie theater. Even though they apparently neglect all of the eating and nutrition rules, they never seem to gain weight. In fact many of them are downright skinny. You probably secretly hate this person, but you also envy them.

Don't.

I spend a lot of time counseling people on how to live like cavemen. There is one tribe out there that I very much worry about. It is the TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside) Tribe. From everything I wrote in the last paragraph, they seem to have it made. They eat whatever they want, don't exercise, and never really gain weight.  Unfortunately, reality is far more complex than that. TOFI's have several problems:

1. Their risk profile is more like that of an obese person than a thin person. TOFI's may look thin, but they have a fair degree of intra-abdominal fat around their visceral organs. This is the fat that really increases the risk of heart disease, type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and early death. According to recent studies, TOFI's have 2-3 times the heart disease risk of fitter people, similar to an obese person.

2. They are largely unaware of their risk. We as a society put some social stigma on being overweight. It is hard to ignore the stigma, as well as the obvious health risks of being an overweight person. Trust me. Since TOFI's are thin in appearance, they do not suffer the social stigma that obese people do. In addition, they probably don't know that they are at an increased risk of diseases until they actually happen. I have seen this many times in my capacity as a physician, and they are always shocked to find out that they have diabetes or heart disease. Don't assume that being thin is all that matters.

3. They don't have to work for their thin body. If you have ever lost weight and tried to maintain an exercise regimen, you know what a struggle it is. Personally, I work out for at least 60-90 minutes a day. Exercise is not an easy thing to do, even if you find it fun like I do. The upside to all of this difficulty is that you truly value the product. The amount that we value something goes up in direct proportion to how difficult it was to obtain it. Since TOFI's are thin with little or no effort, they usually do not value what they have. Also, when they get older, and their ability to remain thin without effort goes away (as it usually does with age), they lack the abilities to exercise hard and eat right that formerly overweight people would have had.

So the next time you look at John or Jenny, the person who never has to work at it and is always thin, remember the burden of being part of the TOFI tribe. Value the hard work that you put in, and the harvest of fitness that you will reap at the end. Also mention this post to your TOFI friend*. You may just save their life.

*DevolveHealth and the Devolve Your Health blog assume no responsibility for ruin of friendship or bodily injury that may occur from telling your friends, colleagues, or enemies that they are fat on the inside, or on the outside for that matter.