Female Fitness Blog

Still Not Great To Be Fat — Even If You’re Fit

Submitted by Fit and Female Blog

We all know that obesity and lack of physical exercise are two major risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease.  But is one more important than the other?  Also, for those individuals who are obese — how protective is being physically active?

That’s what researchers in Boston wanted to know, so they followed the BMI and exercise habits of nearly 39 thousand women for an average of 11 years to see which was more predictive of developing heart maladies — being obese or being inactive.

According to the results published in this week’s Annuals of Internal Medicine, (not too surprisingly either) — the lean, active group were the least likely to develop cardiovascular disease.   More specifically as compared to normal weight active women (defined as 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week):

• Overweight active women had a 54 percent higher chance of developing heart disease
• Obese active women had an 87 percent higher chance of developing heart disease
• Overweight inactive women had an 88 percent higher chance of developing heart disease
• And obese inactive women had a whopping 2 and 1/2 times greater chance of developing heart disease

(*Overweight was defined as a BMI between 25-29 and obese was defined as having a BMI greater than 30)

So although exercising regularly did offer overweight or obese women better protection against heart disease than their sedentary counterparts, the risk of overweight women who exercises was still considerably greater than people of normal weight and worked out.  So while working out is great the news is still the same.  At the end of the day its not an “either or proposition”.  You still need to maintain a healthy body weight - - and workout.

Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women

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