[freevideom]

Wow, suddenly I feel real good. 8)

[enactolaelant]

There was a men's magazine issue about a year or two ago featuring a heavy-set man who was an incredible athlete. He could swim over a mile, ran marathons, long bike rides, etc. Something about his body type prevented him from losing weight, but they studied him and said he was healthy as a horse.

[t78VPkdO]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...hfitfat03.html

Can you be overweight but fit?

By Tracy Wheeler
Knight Ridder Newspapers


ROBIN TINAY SALLIE / AKRON BEACON JOURNAL
Deb Lemire, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, is overweight but not unhealthy, and she has the low cholesterol blood-work results to prove it. She rides her bike, walks in the woods, camps and plays with her daughter.


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AKRON, Ohio — To turn "fat" to "fit," all it takes is swapping an "a" with an "i."
For those who think that's about all those two words have in common, though, a growing stack of research is saying otherwise.

It is, in fact, possible to be both overweight and fit.

The point? Weight isn't everything; your health isn't determined by numbers on a scale.

"People have this all-or-nothing attitude — if I don't lose 100 pounds, it's not worth it," said Dr. Toni King, an endocrinologist in Akron, Ohio. "Every five or 10 pounds makes a difference. Every mile a week you walk makes a difference. Every little bit makes a difference. If you start at 300 pounds and your ideal body weight is 140, getting to 280 still makes a difference."

It may be hard for our diet-obsessed, thin-worshipping country to accept that a larger-than-average person can be fit, but studies out of the Baylor College of Medicine, the University of California at Los Angeles and the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, among others, are showing that weight loss is not a prerequisite to being fit.

Reducing heart-disease risk


At UCLA, researchers put 11 obese men on a very low-fat, high-fiber diet, with daily 45- to 60-minute walks on a treadmill. After three weeks, the men had lost little weight (about 4 percent each) but their cholesterol levels dropped 19 percent and their insulin levels dropped 46 percent. Seven men who entered the study with high blood pressure left with normal readings.

Lead researcher Dr. James Barnard said when the results were released last year that the message is, "You don't have to wait till you've lost a lot of weight to get major reductions in heart-disease risk."

The Baylor study came to the same conclusion, finding that losing just 7 percent to 10 percent of body weight puts cholesterol, glucose and blood-pressure readings into the normal range. Another Baylor study showed that walking 130 minutes a week — that's less than 20 minutes a day — and losing just 5 percent to 7 percent of body weight cut a patient's risk of diabetes by 60 percent.




Being thin is not enough


For all the doubters out there, there's more.

At the Cooper Institute, two separate studies — one following 9,925 women and another tracking 25,000 men — found that fitness level is a much stronger indicator against early death than weight. Being thin offers no protection, in and of itself.

In other words, the death rate for men and women who are thin but unfit is at least twice as high as those who are obese and fit, the Cooper Clinic found.

"In fact, across every category of body composition, unfit individuals have a much higher death rate than those who are fit," wrote Dr. Steven Blair, the Cooper Institute's director of research. "Fitness appears to provide protection against early mortality no matter how much you weigh."

None of this is news to Deb Lemire of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Yes, she's overweight. But, no, she's not unhealthy. She has the numbers to prove it.

Two years ago, Lemire saw her doctor for a checkup, including blood work. Her triglycerides — lipids in the bloodstream — were high, so her doctor asked her to cut back on carbohydrates.

Lemire made small changes, limiting her carbs and exercising a little more — some treadmill work during her daughter's swimming lessons at the YMCA and some bicycling with the family. There was no strict diet, no over-the-top exercise routines.

Heavy but healthy


Two years later, she'd lost only 12 pounds. Her blood work, however, showed something much more dramatic — her triglycerides dropped from 272 to 146; her total cholesterol dropped from 198 to 188; and her LDL, or bad, cholesterol dropped from 151 to 113. All of those numbers fell into the range that's considered healthy.

"And you know what?" she said wryly. "I'm still fat."

"Our society says if you're fat, you're unhealthy. That implies that if you're thin, you're healthy. And that's not true."

Mark Feakes sees it every day as health and fitness manager at the Akron General Health & Wellness Center.

"There are plenty of fat 'thin' people," he said. "They look fine in clothes but then you measure their body fat and find 30 percent body fat."

More proof, he said, is that "if you're looking at how healthy the heart is, (weight) is not a good indicator at all."

Body mass index isn't helpful either. (BMI equals your body weight in pounds multiplied by 703, then divided by your height in inches squared. A score of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight; 30 to 39.9 is deemed obese and over 40 counts as extremely obese.) This is really nothing more than a height/weight chart that doesn't take fitness level or body fat into account.

Stress test and body fat measurements are a better gauge, Feakes said. There are even home scales available that measure body fat.

There are still greater risks


Not everyone, of course, agrees with the "fat and fit" notion.

A study published last year from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill found that overweight women — whether they were fit or not — were more likely to die earlier than fit, thin women. In fact, the increased risk or early death for fit, fat women was nearly the same as unfit, thin women.

"Certainly, if you're fat, it's better to be fit than unfit," King said. "But if you're fit and still fat, there are greater health risks than if you're fit and thin."

Still, King understands the realities at work here. Not everyone can reach their ideal weight. And they don't have to. She recommends that her patients lose 10 percent to 20 percent of their body weight over five years. Losing as little as 7 percent, though, has been shown to make a difference.

"If you can walk five miles a week, that's better than doing nothing. Look, the fitter you are the longer you may be able to go without insulin, or maybe you can delay that first heart attack for another five years."


Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company

[LillyPlay]

And besides, it's fun to be fit AND thin. And people can be both. But there are those people I have known who are thin with their oh-so-fabulous diet of coffee, cigarettes and beer. yikes.