Probably, yes if overweight and not too obese... But there are contrasting perspectives on this:
- See the following two short articles (both only 4 pages including references) for a summary from each perspective (unfortunately you have to pay for access to the full articles but the first pages of each are accessible for free via the links below and provide the gist of the arguments and I have listed the [free to access] key scientific research in the Science Tab):
- The Health Risks of Obesity Have Not Been Exaggerated
- The Health Risks of Obesity Have Been Exaggerated
- If you are very overweight / obese you are going to be making it harder on yourself to get fit and stay fit and probably increasing your chance of injury too as well as probably not getting the full amount of health benefits that you would otherwise get.
- Overweight is typically defined as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 to less than 30 and Obese is greater than or equal to 30.
- Years of life expectancy lost after age 40 in relation to joint categories of physical activity level and body mass index.
- A physical activity level of 0.1–7.4 MET-h/wk is equivalent to brisk walking for up to 150 min/wk.
- The bars indicate the number of years of life lost for each category, and the vertical lines are the 95% CIs. The reference category is normal weight and 7.5+ MET-h/wk of physical activity (i.e., meeting US recommended physical activity levels). Normal weight is a BMI of 18.5–24.9 kg/m2, overweight is a BMI of 25.0–29.9 kg/m2, obese class I is a BMI of 30.0–34.9 kg/m2, and obese class II+ is a BMI of 35.0 kg/m2 or greater. Years of life expectancy lost after age 40 were derived using direct adjusted survival curves for participants who were 40+ y of age at baseline and not underweight (96.5% of participants). Life expectancy models used age as the underlying time scale and were adjusted for gender, alcohol consumption (0, 0.1–14.9, 15.0–29.9, 30.0+ g/d), education (did not complete high school, completed high school, post-high-school training, some college, completed college), marital status (married, divorced, widowed, unmarried), history of heart disease, history of cancer, and smoking status (never, former, current). Source:
- Metabolically Unhealthy Obesity (MUO) vs Metabolically Healthy Obesity (MHO). Source:
- Obesity defined as a BMI of 30.0 or more and:
- a waist circumference of 102 cm or more for men.
- a waist circumference of 88 cm or more for women.
- MHO if 0 of 4 following metabolic components:
- Elevated Blood Pressure (BP) (systolic BP ≥130 mm Hg, diastolic BP ≥85 mm Hg, or anti-hypertensive medication use).
- Elevated Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG) (≥100 mg/dL [to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.0555] or anti-diabetic medication use).
- Reduced High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (HDL-C) (<40 mg/dL for men and <50 mg/dL for women [to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.0259]).
- Elevated triglycerides (≥150 mg/dL [to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.0113]).
- A key limitation of the above research in the context of this page:
- The following elements which might be important in understanding the metabolic health status of individuals with obesity were not evaluated:
- Physical activity.
- Cardiovascular fitness.
- Body fat distribution.
- Obesity and metabolic health
- If competitive performance is your thing, for most activities, being very overweight or obese is probably going to make it harder for you to compete as successfully as you might otherwise too.
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