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“Obesity is only related with worse health in individuals who were unfit”. This is one of the conclusions from the recent study by York University. Moving more is always beneficial, even if it doesn’t directly lead to weight loss.
Fitness is at least as important as weight
“Can you be fit with severe obesity?” That’s the question the researchers wanted to answer.
In cases of severe obesity, adverse health consequences are often automatically linked. Think, among other things, of cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, and diabetes. According to the researchers at York University, many of these consequences are equally, or even more, due to the lack of physical activity. The weight itself may not need to be the (sole) problem. For example, the research shows that even people with a BMI higher than 40 can have a similar health profile as people who weigh much less.
Obesity is only related with worse health in individuals who were unfit
Jennifer Kuk, York University’s School of Kinesiology and Health Science
Health not always linked to weight loss
The main conclusion from the study is that you achieve the health benefits of physical activity much faster than it affects weight. This knowledge can be very motivating.
Especially for people who find it easier to move more than to eat less. Activity determines a reasonably small part of your daily energy needs. So you have to increase the activity relatively much for a relatively small result in lost body weight. As long as this extra expenditure is less than the energy surplus in your diet, you won’t lose any weight at all. Knowing this can make you less motivated to move more if you already have trouble with your diet.
You really have to disconnect the body weight from the importance of fitness. You can get fit without losing weight and have health benefits.
But you shouldn’t see your body weight as the leading or only number when it comes to improving health. For example, the researchers point out that recommendations for 150 minutes of exercise per week often result in less than half a pound of weight loss. However, this amount of exercise can lead to significant improvements in the health of people with severe obesity. Think of improvements in blood pressure, blood sugar, and triglyceride levels.
‘Fat, but fit!’
The tendency to work less on physical activity when your diet isn’t right is recognizable. Also for people who are normally very focused on fitness and healthy eating. However, it is often the lack of training that leads to a worse diet.
I often hear from fitness enthusiasts that they tend to relax their diet when their training is a bit less intense. A week without training often means a week of poor eating. Somewhere, a voice says, “I haven’t trained anyway, so I’ll skip that protein shake.” However, this is very illogical. Relaxing the diet only makes the absence of training have a greater effect. Personally, I try to override that little devil with the angel that reminds me of this.
If you struggle with overweight and know your diet isn’t ideal, you may have a little devil on your shoulder saying, “Go for a walk? Haha, as if that makes up for the calzone with a Big Mac for dessert!” From the other shoulder, there might be a soft voice suggesting that compensating for half a Big Mac is better than nothing. That might not be very motivating to get off the couch. However, if you detach the idea that exercise must lead to weight loss, then the second voice can bring a more interesting message: “What does your walk have to do with your dinner? Go for a walk and stay fit!”
There are some patients that want to significantly improve their health and others that are only looking for an aesthetic goal. When it comes to health, this study reinforces the notion that people don’t need to lose weight to be healthy
Sean Wharton
Fitness and overweight?
What does this mean in practice? Don’t we often see both overweight and a lack of physical activity? This research also shows that the likelihood of getting enough exercise is much lower as the degree of overweight increases. However, we also see a relatively large percentage of people who are fit despite being overweight.
The researchers used data from 853 patients from the Wharton Medical Weight Management Clinics in Ontario, Canada. Participants took part in a clinical trial that included blood tests and physical fitness testing. The latter was done by a stress test on a treadmill. Of the participants with slight overweight, 41% had a ‘high fitness level’. In the groups with moderate and severe overweight, this was 25% and 11% respectively.
However, you didn’t have to be the most athletic participant to have a better health profile. As long as you were in the top 80% of the fittest participants, you didn’t have to worry as much about high blood pressure, blood sugar, and triglycerides. This was true even with severe overweight; you just had to avoid being in the least fit 20%.
BMI and health
This doesn’t mean weight doesn’t matter anymore, apart from its potential impact on activity levels.
In this study, BMI (Body Mass Index) was still an independent predictor of most metabolic disease risk factors. So even if you have sufficient physical activity, weight still represents an additional risk.
The point the researchers make is that these are both important factors that should automatically be seen as one.
Healthy overweight doesn’t exist!
I have to make a big caveat here. Didn’t I write an article last year called “Healthy overweight doesn’t exist”?
That article was based on research looking at ‘healthy people with overweight’. People with overweight but without signs of it in terms of blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. Looking at these risk factors, these people could be considered healthy. However, heart and vascular diseases were 26% and 28% more common in people with the respective classifications of “overweight” and “obese”. The “overweight” group had a BMI between 25 and 30. In the “obese” group, the BMI was higher than 30.
In this recent study from York University, the same risk factors were examined. However, from last year’s research, we know that this doesn’t tell the whole story about health and an increased risk may still exist.
Conclusion
So, don’t automatically link getting healthier to losing weight if you’re overweight. Even if it doesn’t or inadequately contributes to weight loss, you can prevent many health problems. Considering last year’s research, it should be noted that despite better profiles in terms of blood pressure, sugar, and triglycerides, there is an increased risk of, for example, heart and vascular diseases. However, exercising is always better than not exercising, so use the knowledge that motivates you.
Weight remains an important aspect, but it’s no longer an excuse for a lack of physical activity according to the most recent research.
References
- Kathy Do, Ruth E. Brown, Sean Wharton, Chris I. Ardern, Jennifer L. Kuk. Association between cardiorespiratory fitness and metabolic risk factors in a population with mild to severe obesity. BMC Obesity, 2018; 5 (1)
