Marathon Me

Amby Burfoot posted on his blog that based on a new study it is okay to eat a lot.

I read a new paper from the Journal of Gerontology: “Fitness and Fatness as Mortality Predictors in Healthy Older Men.”

The paper described an epidemiological study of Veterans over 65 who had been followed for 7 years. In that time, 208 of the initial 981 men died from one cause or another. I’m only a few years short of 65, so I flipped the pages with considerable interest. The researchers reached two major conclusions. First, they found that fitness decreased the risk of death. The most-fit men in the study had a 61 percent lower risk of dying than the least-fit men.

So far, so good. I felt confident that my 25 weekly running miles and additional 3 to 4 hours of stationary cycling put me in the most-fit category.

Second conclusion: The fattest subjects had the lowest death rates. The men with a BMI that put them in the “obese” category had a 56 percent lower risk of dying than average-weight men. And the skinny guys like me–they were even worse.

The benefits of fitness and fatness were additive. In other words, the absolute healthiest, longest-living men in this study were those who were both fit and fat.

So it sounds like we are all clear to load up on the cookies and ice cream.

The research showed that, in Pittsley’s words, “if you stay fit into late life, a couple of extra pounds are not going to hurt you.” The Veterans study more or less replicated research done at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas which showed that fit-fat individuals had no higher death risk than fit-thin people.

The higher death rates in Pittsley’s study of fit-normals over fit-fat could result because the lower-weight subjects had an illness that caused them to lose weight and then die. Or it could result from something called “the survivor effect,” which simply means that the subjects who lived to 65 were relatively immune to the effects of overweight.

I’m going to read the study as it’s okay to eat candy, cookies and all the other stuff that I really wanted to eat anyway.  This has been why I run anyway, so that I can eat whatever I want, and now I have scientific proof.

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