There is a lot of emphasis in American society today to "cut fat out of the
diet". It is true that excessive fat is bad for the human body. However, fat does have its uses.
What does fat do? It is a storage medium. An interesting fact about fat is that fat cells do not multiply - they simply enlarge as more materials are stored within them. Fat is present in every corner of the body, and for very good reasons.
First, if you were to remove all the fat from your body, your organs would chafe against one another, since fat is used to isolate organs. Hemmorhaging would ensue. Fat is used as a sort of "shock absorber", so every time you moved, you'd be subjecting your organs to undue stress - especially your muscles. You'd also get pretty cold. Women tend to be more tolerant of swimming in frigid waters than men because they have a layer of fat surrounding their vital organs; they do all the fishing down at Tierra del Fuego, because if the men go in the water, they usually go into hypothermia. This doesn't mean women are more tolerant of cold in general, as what seems cold to some women may seem fine to some men.
Second, there are certain vitamins which are water-soluble. The rest are fat-soluble. Water-soluble vitamins include B-complex vitamins and vitamin C. Fat-soluble vitamins include A, D, E, and K. If you had no fat, even if you managed to survive the hemmorhaging, you'd die anyway from all sorts of nasty conditions associated with malnutrition.
Of course, fat also stores vitamin J and numerous other toxins, so there's a good reason to keep it in check. Strenuous exercise tends to tap the fat cells and move these toxins into the bloodstream, so be careful.
Too much fat can crush up against organs. Morbidly obese people have been known to die from asphyxiation due to their lungs being crushed by fat as they slept. Ways of dealing with morbid obesity include dietary modification, exercise programs, surgery, and Richard Simmons.