Just Weight a Minute

Just Weight a Minute

Is it possible to be both fat and fit? Yes, to a limited degree. Five-hundred-pound sumo wrestlers, three-hundred-pound football defensemen, and some long-distance or endurance swimmers are both strong and overweight. However, they cannot be described as completely fit. They are functionally fit for their chosen sports. For most people, balanced fitness leads to a long, healthy life.
Glenn Gaesser and Steven Blair from the highly regarded Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas studied 20 years of statistics about the relationship between body weight and fitness. Their conclusion was that being active rather than sedentary is the critical factor in health and longevity. This means that naturally thin nonexercisers can be less healthy than overweight people who are physically active. Other studies have backed up these findings. In other words, for most people in the real world, obesity and fitness are mutually exclusive.The Cooper study ranked physical inactivity and smoking at the top of the list of factors that put people at medical risk. It concluded that men who are the least fit have one-and-a-half times the mortality rate as men who are the most fit, and women who are the least fit have twice the mortality rate of women who are the most fit. It is important to know, however, that the researchers noted that it isn’t necessary to be a super athlete to dramatically cut risk factors. Even being moderately fit and physically active can do the trick, and that’s what most beginning exercisers are looking for.
The Journal of the American Medical Association in late 1999 reported on a government study that underscored the problem and made headlines around the country. Researchers in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the percentage of obese Americans (those who are overweight by 30 percent or more) skyrocketed from 12 percent in 1991 to 17.9 percent in 1999. The biggest change for the worse was among 18- to 29-year-olds and among Hispanics, but this weight increase cut across state lines, age groups, and gender barriers, as the entire country seemed sedentary and to be on one communal eating binge.