{"id":20844,"date":"2016-01-13T01:43:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T09:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=20844"},"modified":"2016-01-13T19:39:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T03:39:03","slug":"about-that-swedish-you-cannot-be-fat-and-fit-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=20844","title":{"rendered":"Some Criticism Of That Swedish &#8220;Fat And Fit is a Myth&#8221; Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/jessica-jones.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/jessica-jones-590x332.jpg\" alt=\"jessica-jones\" width=\"590\" height=\"332\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-20848\" srcset=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/jessica-jones-590x332.jpg 590w, https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/jessica-jones-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/jessica-jones-940x529.jpg 940w, https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/jessica-jones.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So a new Swedish study has been making headlines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/lifestyle\/health\/you-cannot-fat-fit-study-7048736\">&#8216;You cannot be fat AND fit&#8217;: Study warns obese people still have greater health risks &#8211; Mirror Online<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/2015\/12\/21\/fat-but-fit-health_n_8855824.html\">&#8216;Fat But Fit&#8217; Is Not Good For Health: Study<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/health\/news\/12060671\/Fat-but-fit-counts-for-nothing-scientists-say-obesity-is-what-drives-early-death.html\">&#8216;Fat but fit&#8217; counts for nothing scientists say &#8211; obesity is what drives early death &#8211; Telegraph<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/health\/article-3368186\/No-T-fat-fit-say-experts-Doing-lots-exercise-overweight-does-not-prevent-early-death.html\">No, you CAN&#8217;T be fat and fit, say Professor Peter Nordstrom from Umea University | Daily Mail Online<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The study, <a href=\"http:\/\/ije.oxfordjournals.org\/content\/early\/2015\/12\/20\/ije.dyv321.abstract\">&#8220;Aerobic fitness in late adolescence and the risk of early death: a prospective cohort study of 1.3 million Swedish men&#8221;<\/a>, was published in December in the <em>International Journal of Epidemiology<\/em>. The authors are Gabriel H\u00f6gstr\u00f6m, Anna Nordstr\u00f6m, and Peter Nordstr\u00f6m. The reason the study made headlines was its finding that &#8220;unfit normal-weight individuals had 30% lower risk of death from any cause than did fit obese individuals.&#8221; It&#8217;s an interesting study &#8211; but not nearly as conclusive as the headlines (and some internet commenters) seem to believe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This is only one study.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many studies have found that fitness matters more than fat, for mortality. For instance, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/24438729\">this 2014 meta-analysis of ten peer-reviewed studies<\/a> found that &#8220;Compared to normal weight-fit individuals, unfit individuals had twice the risk of mortality regardless of BMI. Overweight and obese-fit individuals had similar mortality risks as normal weight-fit individuals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/19744231\">2010 meta-analysis of 36 peer-reviewed studies<\/a> concluded &#8220;that the risk for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality was lower in individuals with high BMI and good aerobic fitness, compared with individuals with normal BMI and poor fitness.&#8221; ((I want to acknowledge that the same meta-analysis also found that being fat, even for fit individuals, &#8220;was a greater risk for the incidence of type 2 diabetes and the prevalence of cardiovascular and diabetes risk factors, compared with normal BMI with low physical activity.&#8221; But it&#8217;s interesting that these risk factors didn&#8217;t translate to greater mortality.))<\/p>\n<p>Overall, results are mixed. I&#8217;m not saying that this Swedish study should be ignored (although it has limitations &#8211; see below). But it&#8217;s one data point among many, rather than meaning that &#8220;the debate is over,&#8221; as one person told me on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This study only measured fitness at age 18.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This study&#8217;s method was to measure fitness of over a million young Swedish men (average age 18), and then follow them for approximately 30 years, keep track of if they died and what they died from. ((I&#8217;m simplifying a bit for the sake of space and simplicity.)) <\/p>\n<p>So the study didn&#8217;t measure if being <em>currently <\/em>fat and fit reduces <em>current <\/em>mortality; it measured whether being fat and fit <em>at age 18<\/em> reduces mortality over the next three decades. That&#8217;s an interesting thing to study &#8211; but it&#8217;s hard to see how this speaks to whether or not someone like me &#8211; a 47 year old fat man &#8211; might reduce my risk of mortality with regular exercise in my <em>current <\/em>life.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, since the study only followed male subjects, it&#8217;s unclear if these results can be generalized to women. (The study used Swedish army data from young men who were conscripted into the military; I don&#8217;t know if any comparable database exists of young Swedish women&#8217;s fitness.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pragmatically, it doesn&#8217;t matter, because weight-loss diets don&#8217;t work<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;can you be fat and fit?&#8221; debate ignores the fact that, for most fat people, adding regular mild exercise is achievable, and significant long-term weight loss <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/29\/95-of-diets-fail-more-like-99-or-maybe-998\/\">is not<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, not everyone can exercise &#8211; there are many barriers (such as health, economics, the need to care for children, long work hours, and so on&#8230;) that can prevent people from exercising. Plus, some people just don&#8217;t <em>want <\/em>to exercise, and that&#8217;s fine, too. (No one is obliged to exercise, and fat people who exercise are not better than fat people who don&#8217;t).<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, for many or most fat people, exercise is possible, if that&#8217;s what they want. So even if in some theoretical sense being thin is better for health than exercising, that doesn&#8217;t matter for fat people like me, because <em>being thin is not one of my available options<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So a new Swedish study has been making headlines: &#8216;You cannot be fat AND fit&#8217;: Study warns obese people still have greater health risks &#8211; Mirror Online &#8216;Fat But Fit&#8217; Is Not Good For Health: Study &#8216;Fat but fit&#8217; counts &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=20844\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20844"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20862,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844\/revisions\/20862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}