It’s time to retire the idea you can be ‘fat but fit’

CAN you be fat but fit? In other words, can you be extremely overweight but still be healthy? I was recently on a radio programme discussing this with someone who argued passionately that weight shouldn’t matter and that we are overly obsessed with numbers on a scale.

Now I agree that scales alone are unreliable, that fat shaming is awful and that telling other people to lose weight never works. But the bad news for the very overweight is that this does matter and even if you’re currently healthy, you’re unlikely to stay that way. That’s according to lots of research, including a recent study, published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, by researchers from Glasgow University. They looked at data collected from more than 381,000 men and women Their findings were shocking: after 11 years people who were obese (ie with a BMI over 30), but healthy at the start of the study were 420 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, 76 per cent more likely to suffer heart failure, and nearly 20 per cent more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke compared with people with a healthy weight.

On the basis of these results, Dr Frederick Ho, who led the study, thinks the term ‘metabolically healthy obesity’ (ie what many might call fat but fit) should be retired. I would recommend keeping an eye, as I do, not only on your weight, but your waist size, your blood sugar levels and blood pressure.

And if any of those numbers are high, or rising, do something about it.