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Some state that the 'obesity epidemic' would be the greatest public health challenge from the 21st century. Increasingly, however, research is showing that how much you weigh does not matter as much if you are fit with regards to health outcomes. Amanda Smith reports.

Within the olden days of monochrome TV, ads suggested qing zi shou weight loss that taking a pill might get you fit. If you were 'too fat, too fat, too fat', Ford Pills would get you looking trim and healthy in no time. Today it seems there's more pressure than ever before to be skinny, but they are the trimmest looking people really the healthiest? Are you able to be fat and fit?

Carl Lavie is really a US cardiologist, medical researcher and the author of The Obesity Paradox. In excess of Ten years he's been analysing a trend he soon started seeing in the heart disease patients.

'It's been surprising in my experience like a doctor, and I think somewhat has turned the usual understanding upside down,' he says. 'What our research, I believe, has clearly shown is that thinner is not necessarily healthier.'

'Despite the negative effects of overweightness and obesity to improve the prevalence of heart diseases, we've been finding that once our patients develop cardiovascular disease, that the overweight and obese are actually using a better prognosis: sometimes 30 percent to 50 per cent lower mortality rates compared to lean patients. That's simply the obesity paradox.'

Dr Lavie hypothesises that body fat may bolster your body's defences against disease.

'Any time your body is fighting a disease or shouldering the load of the chronic disease, it takes more energy and higher caloric reserves than normal, therefore it is sensible the weight in the form of body fat is helpful.'

The counterpoint to Dr Lavie's theory is the fact that it should be better not to be in the weight category that puts you most vulnerable to heart disease to begin with.

There is another factor playing, however. Dr Lavie takes his lead on this from a workout science colleague, Steven Blair, who was the lead author of The Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study.

'He's published numerous papers about the fatness versus fitness debate, and to sum this up, his research shows the thin people who are not fit have high mortality rates, and the overweight who are fit have considerably better survival compared to the thin who're unfit.'

'Typically in today's world, once we become adults we gain weight and lose fitness. The study implies that if you are likely slim forte capsule to give up among those, you'd be much better off gaining weight and remaining fit, because fitness is much more important than fatness regarding long-term healthy outcomes. The end result is that if you remain fit, it truly does not matter so much what you weigh.'