Can You Be Fat and Fit?

Can you be obese but healthy? It may be possible, say researchers, but losing weight might make you even healthier.

A study published in Diabetes found that people who are obese but have healthy metabolic levels, which include normal blood pressure as well as healthy cholesterol and blood sugar levels, could improve their health even more by losing weight.

The study, reported on LiveScience.com, contradicts a previous study’s result showing that the healthy obese may be less healthy if they lose weight. But the new study can’t explain why some people seem to be healthy and obese or even if it’s actually possible.

“Right now we are in a gray zone. It is really protective to be metabolically healthy?” Martin Brochu, an obesity researcher at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, told LiveScience. “There’s a huge debate in the scientific literature right now.”

Researchers have noted that while obesity is connected with many health problems, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes, some obese people had normal cholesterol and blood sugar levels, indicating they didn’t have traditional risk factors for heart disease.

But the new study found that even the obese who were considered metabolically healthy improved their insulin sensitivity by 18.5 percent when they lost weight.