No such thing as fat but healthy
 

Even a tiny bit of flab raises heart failure risk

Compared with lean active men, the hazard ratios were
1.19 (95% CI, 0.94 to 1.51), lean inactive
1.49 (95% CI, 1.30 to 1.71), overweight active
1.78 (95% CI, 1.43 to 2.23), overweight inactive
2.68 (95% CI, 2.08 to 3.45), obese active
3.93 (95% CI, 2.60 to 5.96) , obese inactive.

We didn't need a crystal ball to guess this would be the discovery:

If you're fat, clean up your diet and lose the weight.
If you're a layabout, get off your lazy ass and go exercise.
And if that's a fat lazy ass... you REALLY better clean up your diet and go exercise.

This puts the death knell to the "I'm overweight but I'm healthy 'cause I'm active" nonsense. Bullfeathers!
:eek:
Time to stop kidding ourselves, folks. Overweight is NEVER healthy. Even the lean lazy as a slug types were healthier than the overweight actives.

they didn't study gen pop. they studied doctors.

they didn't study bodyfat..they used BMI only

it was all self reported from annual questionaires.

I think Reuters is imparting a bit of topspin..

Looks like they polled a fairly typical bunch of middle aged office workers to me. Might be a little Caucasian skewed. Might be a little upper income skewed. That might weaken the population-wide applicability a bit perhaps.
BMI works pretty well on non-athletes. I would prefer bodyfat if I could get it of course.
Wouldn't have been an economically feasible study any other way. CHF is a major diagnosis, I don't think anybody is lying about developing it.
I wouldn't know. I skipped the article and went straight for the Abstract of the paper:
Body Mass Index and Vigorous Physical Activity and the Risk of Heart Failure Among Men

The data show a very obvious trend. The fatter you are, the more likely you are to get congestive heart failure (CHF). Exercise mitigates some of the risk but leanness trumps activity at each and every level.

Pretty clear take home message:
1. Get and stay lean.
2. For added protection, get fit too.
3. Don't kid ourselves if we're fat and active. Our risk factors are still WAY elevated. The chub MUST go or we're upping our risk of creating widows and orphans!!!

Looks like they polled a fairly typical bunch of middle aged office workers to me. Might be a little Caucasian skewed. Might be a little upper income skewed. That might weaken the population-wide applicability a bit perhaps.
BMI works pretty well on non-athletes. I would prefer bodyfat if I could get it of course.
Wouldn't have been an economically feasible study any other way. CHF is a major diagnosis, I don't think anybody is lying about developing it.
I wouldn't know. I skipped the article and went straight for the Abstract of the paper:
Body Mass Index and Vigorous Physical Activity and the Risk of Heart Failure Among Men

The data show a very obvious trend. The fatter you are, the more likely you are to get congestive heart failure (CHF). Exercise mitigates some of the risk but leanness trumps activity at each and every level.

Pretty clear take home message:
1. Get and stay lean.
2. For added protection, get fit too.
3. Don't kid ourselves if we're fat and active. Our risk factors are still WAY elevated. The chub MUST go or we're upping our risk of creating widows and orphans!!!

we must have read different studies, the abstract i read was a little bit lighter on hyperbole.

LOL! Sorry about the hyperbole, Dave! Journalism training, "If it bleeds, it leads." mentality was driven into me well and early.

As one fine editor said, (minus the cursing) "Don't tell them what it means. Our readers don't care what it means! Our readers care what it means TO THEM!!! Now go write OUR READERS into your story. Wait, cancel that "your story." THAT'S the problem, it's YOUR STORY. It's no longer YOUR STORY. It's OUR READER'S STORY. Now go rewrite it that way!!!"

Nothing like getting pointedly screamed at a little to make you write snappier prose.

<<<>>>

Still, the risk factor rise in that study with increased BMI and reduced activity IS pretty compelling, eh? ;)

it makes me think more about the opposite population: big, athletic and muscular. there may be some practical reasons why human males can't seem to get lean and big (over 220) without "help" ... the body just ain't evolved for that and doesn't want to get there.

but then again, nobody said being awesome was healthy.

Yeah, I hear you on that one. As a natural ecto, I'm never going to be 220+ unless I'm FAT.

I've noticed that the injury patterns of the lower weight class guys vs the supers are rather different. I generally get pretty quick results with the smaller guys. The supers are a challenge. Big tight muscles that have been slammed with ultra high abuse levels are not easy to fix. Still, we help where and how we can.

No static work on supers, that's for sure. He can move that big old meat hook or horses hoof himself! Even with them helping, an hour working on a tight super is harder than two days of working on normals.

The problem with this study is that high BMI in men is correlated with central adiposity. We don't know if this study is measuring the negative health effects of overweight, of central adiposity, or of some primary dysfunction that causes both.

I believe a number of recent studies have shown the abdominal to hip ratio being a better predictor of CV events than BMI. If true, fat can be healthy, at least if the fat is subcutaneous.

Interesting. Got a reference on that?