Your tummy may be putting your life in danger, regardless of how many miles you run a week.
If you carry an extra couple of kilos in your abdomen, all the burpees you do may not be enough to save you: According to a Swedish study, being obese is more dangerous than being sedentary.
To answer the question of whether exercise can offset the risks of being fat, the researchers measured the Body Mass Index (BMI) and aerobic capacity of more than 1.3 million young men.
They took the VO2 Max level (the maximum amount of oxygen your body can absorb and use during intense exercise) measured during a cycling test to mark how aerobically fit you were. Then they recorded the number of deaths that occurred over the next 29 years.
The researchers found that men with the lowest aerobic capacities who maintained a normal BMI (between 18.5 and 24.9) were 30% less likely to die during that time period than obese men (with a BMI of 30 or higher) with the highest high aerobic levels.
It is not entirely clear why obesity nullifies the positive effects of exercise. Likewise, it is important to note that the study uses BMI to determine obesity since it does not differentiate between fat and muscle mass.
However, the possible constant that the researchers found is that a high body fat index, not muscle, is what caused the extra weight.
This is probably thanks to the inflammatory hormones produced by fatty tissue, explains Dr. Kevin Davy, director of the Fralin Translational Obesity Research Center at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
The more fatty tissue, the more inflammation, which is linked to the development of many serious illnesses, such as heart disease and depression, he adds.
Now, we are not saying that exercise does not help. In fact, when the study looked at all men, it found that those who had better aerobic capacity were half as likely to die from any cause compared to men with poorer aerobic capacity.
It’s just that the more fat you load, the benefit of exercise appears to be less, says study author Dr. Peter Nordström.
This may be because the inflammation, caused by fatty tissue, overrides the anti-inflammatory hormones produced by exercise, which would otherwise reduce the risk of metabolic and heart disease, Davy adds.
So just exercising is not enough. You need to reduce visceral fat (the type of fat associated with serious health problems) with a training program that revolutionizes your metabolism and a diet that helps you eliminate being overweight.