Obese athletes show fat can be fit

A lifelong acolyte of exercise and fitness, Sandy Shaffer works out three times per week, eats a diet loaded with fruits and vegetables, and somehow finds time to teach a weekly aerobics class.

At 1.65m and 145kg, Shaffer also is considered obese.

But the plus-sized sports enthusiast insists that the label says little about the generally excellent state of her health.

Advertisement: Story continues below And that is the single biggest problem she has with US First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move health initiative.

"I'm glad they encourage people to move, but it's still a negative message," said Shaffer, an administrator at a New York City labour union.

Michelle Obama's signature initiative, which marked its one year anniversary this week, aims to help kids slim down by eating better and getting more active.

The fitness community by-and-large has embraced the first lady's signature program, but a contingent of health experts and aficionados baulk at equating improving one's health with lowering one's weight.

They say it is possible to be extremely fit and also "overweight" by societal norms.

"What if they end up with all the health benefits of movement, but they don't end up losing weight? Since this is an anti-obesity thing, are they not failures?" said Shaffer.

"Ballet dancers look good, but you wouldn't necessarily call them healthy if you look at what they have to do to keep at that weight," she said.

"If you take weight out of the picture and take diet out of the picture, you might get people to move longer and more often," she said.

Dr Kenneth Cooper, one of America's leading experts on health and obesity, says the awareness that a robust body need not mean poor health is something that he has stressed for years.

"We've incorporated both fitness and fatness into all of our studies," said Cooper, head of the Cooper Aerobics Centre in Dallas, Texas and founder of the non-profit Cooper Institute which conducts health and fitness research.

"We look at fitness as measured by treadmill time as opposed to body mass index," he said.

With the current thinking, he said "I think you put too much emphasis on obesity," adding that one effective measurement of how fitness has actually improved is having a subject walk on a treadmill at 5.6km/h.

"I would focus first on inactivity, then on obesity," Cooper said.

Another pet peeve he has with the Let's Move program, he said, is a lack of hard metrics to determine whether participants' fitness goals are actually attained.

"I think they're scratching the surface," he said.

"Unless you have some measurement you don't get anywhere. There's no means of quantifying it."

While Cooper would add hard numbers to the First Lady's program, Shaffer said she would change its public face.

One of its most visible spokespeople is diminutive former Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes. Shaffer said heavyset kids might draw more inspiration from a fleshier celebrity.

How about Mo'Nique?," she suggested, referring to the full-figured Oscar-winning actress and comedian.

"She works out a lot," Shaffer said, "and she also embraces her size."

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/obese-athletes-show-fat-can-be...