Fitness more important than fatness, but lose weight to avoid disability

Obese people are likely to live as long as people of normal weight – providing they are fit, according to US researchers who studied 2,603 people in their sixties and older, over a 12-year period.

Participants were measured for body weight, waist size and body mass index (BMI), had a battery of medical tests and also underwent treadmill exercise testing to see how fit they were.

Those who were most fit were much less likely to have diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.

Among people who were fit, survival rates were similar for normal weight, overweight, and obese people.

Other researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, agree that obese people can live as long as people with a normal weight.

They say that survival rates for obese people have increased markedly since the 1960s, which they put down to better medical treatments for the conditions associated with it.

However, there is a greater chance they will be living with disabilities than people of normal weight.

Once a person’s BMI got over about 30, they experienced a big jump in difficulties with everyday tasks, due to reduced mobility from a greater body mass, and from some of the conditions associated with obesity – such as musculoskeletal disorders (arthritis, back pain), reduced muscle strength and reduced heart and lung function.

While the first study showed that some of the medical complications of obesity can be managed by keeping fit, reducing the disability from larger than normal body mass requires not just fitness, but shedding body weight.

That requires not just exercise but caloric restriction – a weight loss diet.