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If you are 20 lbs (9 kg) or more overweight not only is your metabolism broken but a new study reports that even one extra kilo raises death risk.

The American Cancer Society has just released a study which involved about 1.5 million people.
Its findings? Aim to get slim and stay there.

This is one of the largest studies ever undertaken that looks at weight and the correlation between the two.

Way over a few pounds overweight...

The surprise is that you DONT have to be classed as obese to raise the chance of dying prematurely. Just being overweight carries an increased risk of early death.

The contribution of overweight to early death has been controversial up until now with the majority opinion being that a little extra flesh on your bones is not necessarily a bad thing. There has even been some research (including a somewhat controversial 2005 study by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) that concluded being overweight didn’t raise the risk of death) and suggested that a little pudge has little effect on overall longevity or mortality.

I think that this idea of a ‘little extra reserve’ helps you prevent becoming ill is a hangover from the old days when food was scarce. In the West this has been as recent as during WWII.

Not anymore! Because of its size ( the researchers pulled together 19 separate studies that ranged in length for 5 – 28 years in length) and the diversity of the studies included it would seem that the research provides strong evidence against the notion that it’s okay or even a good thing for your health if you are overweight.

The researchers excluded those who developed cancer, smoked or has heart disease so the focus would be on weight. The conclusion of this latest study (remember 1.5 million people!) was that otherwise healthy but overweight white adults were 13 per cent more likely to die during the time they were followed during the study than those whose weight was in an ideal range.

This conclusion was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine and is similar to those of three other large studies suggesting that there is no an increasing and large (no pun intended!!) body of evidence that supports the finding that being overweight, even if not obese, is associated with an increase in the risk of death.

The less you are overweight, the smaller the risk increase but there is still an increase regardless.
I have a couple of issues with the study though – they used the body Mass Index – a measurement of obesity based on a formula using weight & height – which as we all know does not allow for a person’s levels of activity or more importantly take into account the amount of lean tissue that they are carrying. Overweight begins at a BMI measurement of 25, obese at 30 and morbidly obese at 40.

Most world class sprinters and other sportspeople are classified as obese by the BMI when clearly they are not…

By any standard the BMI is not an accurate predictor of individual obesity. However when applied over a wide subject group it is a tolerable ‘rule of thumb’.

There was a correlation between the findings on early mortality and the BMI of the subjects – basically the higher your BMI (the more obese the subject) the higher the increase in early mortality. Compared with subjects whose BMI was in the ‘normal’ range,, those who were overweight had a 13 percent increase in early death. If the BMI classified the subject as obese then the risk increase range was from 44 to 88 per cent. The morbidly obese for those who were obese carried a 2.5 times increase in the likelihood of their dying prematurely.

So what is the take away from all this?? (well cut down on take aways for a start…)
Recondition your metabolism so that it is burning fat and use the information provided here to shift your body from overweight to lean.

Back soon…