Question
The guys I train with are super fit, but some of them have bellies. Can a person be fit and fat?
Answer
It’s what inside that counts. If quality muscle lies under that gut, your mates may fall into a group known as the “metabolically healthy obese”.
These fat-fit guys carry what looks like unhealthy body fat, but their risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes is lower than an unfit obese person’s.
Still, they’re not immune to other obesity-related conditions like sleep apnoea and depression, warns David Mutch, of the University of Guelph in Canada.
The silver lining: a recent study found that men who stayed or became fit – regardless of their BMI – were less likely to die of cancer than unfit men.
