How to be fat and still be a fit person

New research shows you can't judge a person's
fitness by looks alone. Here, the surprising new
thinking on size and exercise.
Your Weight and Fitness
There are two large women who've been in boot
camp with me for years. They almost never miss a
class and never take it easy. Yet as I've lunged,
squatted, and planked alongside them nearly daily,
I'm ashamed to admit that one question has
occasionally bounced around my brain: With all
that exercise, after all this time, why aren't these
women in better shape?
Then came the 2012 Olympic Games. The world
was poised to witness its most formidable female
athletes lock horns in London. And what did we
hear? Slams against Australian swimmer Leisel
Jones, declaring the eight-time medalist fat and
thus unfit to represent her country. Cheap shots
about muffin tops and saddlebags on the British
women's beach volleyball team. And tweets about
British swimmer Rebecca Adlington's physique
that became so vicious, she dropped off Twitter
altogether. "These women made it to the Olympics,
for god's sake. How unfit could they be?" I found
myself ranting at the TV.
Then I thought, sheepishly, about the women at
boot camp. It became clear to me that the knee-
jerk connection I and apparently others might
make between how much a person weighs and how
physically fit and healthy she is needed some
serious reevaluation.
The New Thinking on Weight
Recent research suggests that being overweight or
even obese may not, in and of itself, be the health
threat we think it is. A 2012 study from the
National Cancer Institute found that moderately
obese people actually lived about 3.1 years longer
than normal-weight women and men. Another
study, published in the European Heart Journal,
showed that when obese people are metabolically
healthy — which means their blood pressure,
cholesterol, blood sugar and other indicators fall
within a healthy range — they are at no greater
risk of dying from heart disease or cancer than
those who are of normal weight.
"What we're learning is that a body that exercises
regularly is generally a healthy body, whether that
body is fat or thin," says Glenn Gaesser, PhD, a
professor of exercise and wellness at Arizona State
University and the author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth
About Your Weight and Your Health. Case in point,
the metabolically healthy participants in the
European Heart Journal study were generally more
physically fit than their obese peers. "The message
should really be that if you are exercising regularly,
you shouldn't necessarily be looking at the scale to
determine how healthy or fit you are," Gaesser
says.
There are a multitude of reasons that movement is
such strong medicine: Because muscles are the
largest consumers of sugar in the body, increased
muscle mass reduces the chance of excess sugar
accumulating in the blood, which is essentially
what diabetes is. Regular physical activity reduces
inflammation in the cardiovascular system and
affects the secretion of clotting hormones, allowing
blood to flow more easily to muscles and
preventing the formation of deadly clots. Moderate
exercise (at least 150 minutes a week of medium-
intensity exercise like walking) combined with diet
changes can also reduce the amount of potentially
deadly fat in the liver. And study after study has
shown that overweight and obese people who work
out can reap such benefits and improve their
metabolic health even if they don't shed a pound.
The Skinny on Fat
None of this is to say that we can pack on pounds
without worry. Carrying a lot of weight around
increases stress on joints and can make us less
inclined to be active. There's also the plain reality
that the more overweight you are, the more likely
it is that your metabolic health will take a hit, now
or in the future. "Given the choice, I come down
almost always on the side that being overweight is
a bad thing," says Walter R. Thompson, PhD, a
professor of exercise science at Georgia State
University in Atlanta.
But choice is a loaded word for many obesity
experts, as well as for countless individuals who
have waged a lifelong war with their weight. "I
spent the first part of my life struggling with being
fat. I would lose weight on diets, gain it back, and
each time end up feeling horrible about myself,"
says Hanne Blank, the author of The Unapologetic
Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary
Acts. "Only as I've come into my own as an adult
have I made peace with the fact that I may always
be big." It's a brutal realization that seems to bear
itself out in the big picture: As many as two-thirds
of us end up regaining more weight than we lose
while dieting.
Pinning ambitious weight-loss hopes on exercise
hasn't panned out too well, either. At five feet four
inches and 172 pounds, Sherry Norris, 42, of
Norcross, Georgia, knows this firsthand. A
dedicated exerciser, Sherry alternates running and
working out to the Insanity DVD program on most
days and ran her first marathon last year. "I've
followed all the directions and done the training
plans, and I've lost exactly five pounds. At this
point I have no idea how to get the weight off," she
says.
Within the past few years numerous studies have
borne out exactly what Sherry is experiencing:
Despite the extra calories we burn, many of us fail
to lose weight — and may even gain some — after
embarking on an exercise program. This could be
because our appetite is triggered by vigorous
activity; we reward ourselves for our efforts with
food, or we spend more time vegging out on the
couch when we're not at the gym.
Then there's the tricky topic of metabolism.
"Exercise doesn't rev up the metabolism, as we've
been led to believe," says Diana Thomas, PhD, an
author of a study from the Center for Quantitative
Obesity Research at Montclair State University in
New Jersey. "We found that when volunteers who
were put on an exercise regimen began to lose
weight, their metabolic rate — how many calories
they would burn while sitting and doing nothing —
actually began to drop." Thomas and her
colleagues suspect that metabolic slowing may be
the body's protective attempt to preserve energy
when it senses that more calories are being burned
through exercise. Plus a fit body operates more
efficiently — the heart doesn't have to pump as
fast, breathing is less rapid — and that also
reduces how many calories we burn all day.
Making long-term weight loss even more elusive is
the fact that we each may have our own personal
set point, a range of about 10 to 20 pounds in
which the body biologically tries to stay despite our
efforts. This means that weight loss is biologically
resisted in some people. Also, our appetite makes
it too easy to override the upper threshold of our
set-point range, so we gain weight, says Linda
Bacon, PhD, the author of Health at Every Size: The
Surprising Truth About Your Weight.
The net result of these many hurdles: Even if
people do lose some weight from exercise, they
often don't lose as much as they expect to. For
many, that's reason enough to abandon boot camp
and head back to the couch.
Eyeing a Different Prize
That, Thomas says, is a crying shame. Because
even if pounds don't disappear, a big fat change is
probably taking shape. "Adding regular physical
activity can reduce the proportion of fat to muscle
and affect where fat is distributed," Thomas says.
In particular, as little as a 20-minute daily walk can
reduce the amount of visceral fat that reaches
deep into the abdomen. That's the fat that health
experts worry about, because it is linked to heart
disease, diabetes, and a higher mortality rate.
There's even evidence suggesting that exercise
stimulates the production of a substance called
irisin in muscle tissue. This hormone appears to
transform white fat cells, like those in belly fat, into
brown fat cells, which are metabolically active and
actually burn calories.
"The scale doesn't necessarily reflect all of this,"
Thomas says. Neither does the body mass index
(BMI), which uses only height and weight to
estimate how much body fat we ostensibly have.
This is why a growing number of doctors are now
measuring patients' waist circumference as part of
their standard physical exams. And it's why
Thomas and colleagues at Pennington Biomedical
Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have
devised an index that takes body shape into
account when assessing a person's health. The
body roundness calculator (pbrc.edu/
bodyroundness) uses hip and waist measurements
in addition to weight and height. The closer to a
circle shape a person is, the more visceral body fat
she has. "We're catching people who are out of the
'safe shape' zone but who are not visibly apple
shaped. There are also people whose BMI may
indicate obesity but whose body roundness is
healthy. It's a much better reflection of a person's
health overall," Thomas says.
Big Accomplishments
But can women who are packing an extra 25, 50, or
even 75 pounds on their frame actually kick a*s
athletically? "They might pay a price when it
comes to speed," says Chuck Hobbs, the head
coach for Fit2Train, a triathlon team in Dallas. But
in terms of strength and endurance, the answer is,
hell, yes. Consider the group of athletes recruited
for a recent study at the Institute for Exercise and
Environmental Medicine at Texas Health
Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. All of them are
seriously accomplished, having participated in
multiple Ironman competitions, marathons, or
distance cycling events. And all of them are obese,
with fat making up more than 30 percent of their
body weight. "From a cardiorespiratory standpoint,
they are very strong and very healthy," says the
study's lead author, Santiago Lorenzo, PhD, a
cardiopulmonary researcher at the institute. "They
have outstanding endurance and are comparable
in fitness to fellow athletes of normal weight."
What's more, Lorenzo and other experts suspect
that an obese athlete's body can actually become
stronger from carrying its own weight. In essence,
the extra pounds provide built-in resistance
training, especially for the lungs, which can have
trouble inflating fully when there is a lot of fat in
the chest cavity. "The bodies of the obese athletes
in our study have adapted after years of
conditioning," Lorenzo explains. "They have
developed an ability to generate higher airflow and
deliver ample oxygen to their blood and muscles.
For typical obese people who want to become
active, this may mean that they are not going to
have the limitations we previously assumed they
would."
Minor Changes, Major Benefits
For those who set their sights on the fat-but-fit
paradigm and aspire to a healthier body,
metamorphosis doesn't come easy, however.
Packing extra poundage can make it hard to get
down on the floor or up from it or to move freely.
There's also an emotional component: "They need
to find environments where they won't be bullied
and where they can actually enjoy and excel at
what they're doing," Hobbs says. "When they are
confident about what their body can do, they
become more motivated to take good care of it.
Real change begins to happen."
When the author Hanne Blank retrained her focus
on exercise instead of food, her eating habits and
her weight finally reached an even keel after years
of yo-yoing. And every one of the active large
women interviewed for this story drove home the
fact that making regular exercise a part of her life
has caused her to feel happier as well as more
empowered, attractive, and inclined to take on
greater physical challenges.
All of which is reason for us to stop using the word
normal when we talk about weight and start
focusing on realistic goals and expectations,
including exercising regularly and being more
active every day. These are words to live by for
Blank, who is happy just to get out and get sweaty.
"It's been almost 10 years since I took my life off
hold and decided to become physically active in
spite of my weight. I'm out there almost every day,
walking, biking, hiking, or weight lifting. I feel
comfortable in my body. I'm energetic and
healthy," Blank says. "But even people close to me
sometimes shake their heads and ask why I'm still
fat. And I tell them, 'Because I am. That's just what
I've got!'"
Related: 8 Ways to Burn More Fat, Without
Even Trying
Are You Heavy?
Don't stop moving just because the scale has. If
you're feeling discouraged, keep these important
points in mind.
There's no need to suffer.
If you detest every minute you spend on a
treadmill or Spinning bike, you'll never stick with
it. Find an activity — kickboxing, ballroom dancing,
walking with friends — that you'll want to make a
near-daily part of your life.
You're not alone.
Does being surrounded by smaller, buff bodies at
the gym sound like hell? Sign up for tours at
several clubs near you to find one where you'll feel
comfortable and that has classes that appeal to
you. Party-atmosphere Zumba classes are
particularly welcoming, as are CrossFit classes,
where there's a team dynamic.
You can look great right now.
Enough with the shapeless sweats and tees!
Workout wear that fits and supports your body will
have you sweating in style and performing at your
best..