Whilst there are tremendous benefits to being physically active, being overweight or obese still increases the risk of heart disease by 28%, compared with lean, metabolically healthy people. It’s why obesity is known as a ‘primary risk factor’ for the development of heart disease, independent of other risk factors.
So even if other independent risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels are within the normal range, being obese still increases the risk. It’s also possible to be of a healthy weight and metabolically unhealthy, common in inactive and unfit, but normal BMI people.
The ‘fat but fit’ paradigm therefore does not completely mitigate the risk of developing heart disease and having normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels and taking regular exercise should not be an excuse to eat & drink way too much and carry excess body fat.
Ideally, taking at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week, not being overweight, not smoking, not drinking to excess and managing other primary risk factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol will minimise the chances of developing cardiovascular disease.
Read more about the NHS views on this topic.
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