Study: Death risk depends on exercise more than weight

Worried about those extra fifteen pounds you may be carrying around? A new study suggests your death risk may depend on increasing your exercise not decreasing your calories.

Research released tonight suggests that a person’s fitness may matter more than his or her fatness.

Obesity is linked to a higher risk of death, but the new findings indicate that lack of exercise is a greater health risk than the extra pounds.

Doctors at the Cooper Clinic in Texas and colleagues tracked 2,600 senior adults for an average of 12 years.

Participants underwent an exercise test on a treadmill to determine their level of cardiovascular fitness.

The results showed that, overall, obese individuals had more than double the rate of death as normal weight people — but not after doctors took exercise into account.

Once they factored in fitness levels, researchers found that fit individuals — even when they were obese — had a lower risk of death than lean, unfit people.

Experts say the problem is that obesity makes it much harder to be fit — it limits mobility and puts extra stress on the joints.

But they also conclude that people of all sizes should focus on increasing physical activity, even if they don’t shed any pounds.