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Wednesday 5 September 2012

Fat Definitely Doesn't Mean Fit


This. This annoys me. The most shared story on the BBC News website right now is that fat people can be fit. Well that's just excellent. Cue hoards of overweight heart-attacks-in-waiting crying "See! We told you!" through bites of doughnuts and KFC. Fat people will see fit and read healthy, and this is why...

The study basically shows that out of 18,500 obese people, only half were metabolically unhealthy, meaning they don't suffer from diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. I've never suffered from any of these and, until last year, I was mega un-fit. Just because you don't have those three things wrong with you does not mean you can call yourself fit!

Having done a little science and critical thinking, oh, a decade ago, let's see if I can come up with some variables which have not been considered here.
  1. Fitness defined - What is fit? The article does not tell us and we are left to assume fitness is measured by whether you suffer from one (or more) of three health issues.
  2. Level of obesity - the article does not explain whether these people are just a bit overweight or morbidly obese. It also doesn't explain how obesity has been defined so if, for example, they took the stats of a wrestler and calculated his BMI, he'd be obese. But not fat.
  3. Length of obesity - diseases like those listed in the article can take years to develop. If a participant had only been obese for six months they are obviously less likely to suffer than those who have been fat for three decades.
  4. Fitness in 'non obese' participants - There is no mention of results in the other two-thirds of participants in the study and so we have nothing to compare these results to.
You may think this makes the article pointless and, scientifically, I suppose it does. The problem I have is the impact it will have. There is so little explanation that what a lot of people will read is "I can continue to be fat and not exercise, I'm still fit and healthy as long as I don't get a life threatening disease." and that is wrong. We should be encouraging people to go out and exercise and to eat healthily not just to prevent diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure but also to help prolong your joints and bones, to help regulate your hormones and metabolism and to lift your mood.

Being fat is not healthy and very few fat people could ever be considered fit. Luckily even the picture inspires me to go home and pump some iron so the article isn't a complete washout.

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