Remember when the expression “pleasingly plump” was in vogue? Well, it may be making a come back.
While most of us fear the fitness police may storm into our kitchens any day now and pronounce our diet and lifestyle dangerous and possibly terminal, a 2007 study from the American Medical Association suggests that we can actually be fit AND fat.
Researchers found that the difference in mortality rate between the least fit group and the one just above that made a gigantic difference! In other words, just a little fitness could be twice as good for you as no fitness at all!
I love the line from the November AARP Bulletin article Fat and Fit: Who says you can’t be both? by Linda Greider that documents these findings: “Why don’t you stop sitting around calculating your BMI-body mass index- and go take a nice long walk?”
This reminds me of a wonderful book I read in 1998 called Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry by Laura Fraser.
In this book, Laura personally tried all of the well-known diets in America and documents the good and bad in all of them. Then she concludes with my own dieting watchwords:
“Eat your vegetables and go outside and play!”
As someone who has maintained a decent BMI until age 45 by exercising regularly and NOT dieting, I have concluded the most important way to respond to aging past age 45 is to KEEP MOVING!
By somehow maintaining an optimistic worldview and constant movement toward new ways of thinking and being, I have achieved some small degree of positive aging.
Keep your body, your mind, your senses, and your emotions moving! Make it a way of life. Stop blaming and shaming yourself and others. Don’t get bogged down in your past or your fears for the future. This is the only day you have for certain. How are you going to make it the best ever?
Each day we are born again.
What we do today is what matters most.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
SO glad to read this. I walk 8 – 10 miles a day and you’d think I’d be a skinny-minnie. But my body just readjusts to whatever exercise I add into the mix. I’ve got rock hard muscles under the fat…but dang…there is always the fat. Glad to hear that Chubby-Chic may be in vogue. Great post today!
Yes, I’m convinced there have got to be some really strong muscles in there somewhere!
But they do hide very well, don’t they! -The Queen
We definitely can be fit and fat. Research shows it. See http://www.silverplanet.com/health/heart-circulation/maybe-you-can-be-both-fit-fat/2546 and a Reuters article reporting on the work done at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at http://www.silverplanet.com/health/news/fit-fat-study-shows-its-possible/29438.