I've seen advertisements for slimming programs and products that ask the question, “Fit or fat?” Not only is this a very negative question, it suggests you have to be one or the other.
You can be both! This is the positive message that research now confirms.
Dr Steve Blair, an Epidemiologist with the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas Texas and a respected consultant on exercise to the US Government carried out extensive tests on over 25,000 men who have attended the Cooper Clinic and who have become part of a longitudinal study of longevity in men.
As with other researchers, Blair's group found that the risk of death is higher for men who have a higher body weight. However, most other research does not control for fitness level. Blair suggests that it may not be the excess body weight, per se, but the lack of physical activity that goes with an excess body weight, that is the main cause of ill-health.
He provides support for this from his measures of fitness carried out over many years. Highest death rates occur in men who are overweight and unfit, rather than just overweight. Also, there is a much higher mortality, and particularly death from heart disease, in men who are lean and unfit, than there is in men who are fat, but fit. This goes not only for measures of body weight, but also for measures of fatness involving girth measurements.
Blair is quick to point out that the Cooper Institute results do not mean that obesity is not important in causing health problems. It's just that physical fitness, and the participation in daily physical activity that leads to this, can help compensate for obesity in those cases where exercise may not lead to a significant decrease in body weight.
The problem it seems, as is now being recognised by Governments around the world, is not due to being fat per se, but to the sedentary way of life which is common today in most western countries.
