My goal is to be FIT, NOT SKINNY!

Steven Blair is professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina. He describes the official focus on obesity as an "obsession ... and it's not grounded in solid data".

Blair's most fascinating study, in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2007, took 2,600 people aged 60 and above, of various degrees of fatness, and tested their fitness on the treadmill, rather than asking them to quantify it themselves. This is an unusually rigorous approach, he claims, since many rival surveys ask participants to assess their own fitness, or ignore it as a factor altogether. Proper tests, Blair suggests, demonstrate no hard and fast link between excess weight and increased mortality.

"There is an 'association' between obesity and fitness," he agrees, "but it is not perfect. If you look at the normal-weight men and women aged 60 and older, for example, about 90% are fit as demonstrated by a 'maximal exercise' test in the laboratory. This is not asking them if they're fit, or guessing that they're fit – they've proved it on the treadmill. As you progress towards overweight, class I obesity and class II obesity, the percentage of individuals who are fit does go down. But here's a shock: among class II obese individuals [with a body mass index, or BMI, of between 35 and 39.9], about 40% or 45% are still fit. You simply cannot tell by looking whether someone is fit or not."

But doesn't that only prove that some fat people can hold their own on the treadmill? Not at all, Blair says. "In all of these studies, we typically see higher rates of mortality, chronic diseases, heart attacks and the like, in people with high BMI – we see the same thing that everybody else sees. But when we look at these mortality rates in fat people who are fit, we see that the harmful effect of fat just disappears.

"If we look at individuals who are obese and just moderately fit – we're not talking about marathon runners here – their death rate during the next decade is half that of the normal weight people who are unfit. So it's a huge effect."

Do I want to be SKINNY?
No thank you! I'd rather be FIT! Skinny to me could equate to illness and sickness. It doesn't always equate to healthy. There are SKINNY Aids and Cancer victims.
Skinny people can be unhealthy and NOT fit. I think I've heard a word for that called Skinny -fat. It's very sad when I hear women say they want to be skinny. I know it may be a word and just semantics- I just cringe when I hear it. Can anyone relate? My goal is always to be fit and healthy.

Skinny doesn't always equate to beauty. I've also seen gorgeous "fat" people. I hate that women especially are so brainwashed. I am cuter when I am fit- but I also know that I could be 130lbs and still not look perfect, I will still have a longer that I'd prefer face, a bigger than I'd want nose, and bags under my eyes that unless I go under the knife, are genetic features.

Skinny doesn't equate to having a perfect life. No one has a perfect life. Your life may be easier if you are fit- but your problems still don't go away magically. If you have depression or anxiety when you are overweight, unless you get therapy, chances are the depresison/anxiety will still continue. Weight loss doesn't change that- your MIND is what makes or breaks you.

People do not love you more if you are fit. If they do, they are not the quality people you'd want in your life anyway and you'd deserve more.

If people judge you, that's their issue, but remember skinny does not equate to beauty or necessarily good physical or mental health. You have to WORK hard to be fit- even thin people have to work hard to be fit.

How do you want your life? Anyone get me? If so msg me, add me, always up for new friends!