Fit Forever is better - time to take out the tape measure?

If you’ve got into your thirties, forties or fifties in shape, you may well have a longer life ahead of you than those who were overweight during those years. And particularly those between 17 and 29.

That’s the conclusion of the latest study from Sweden’s Lund University on the life-changing link between obesity and slimness. Nothing if not thorough, in a monumental exercise the institution’s researchers monitored 620,000 people over half their adult life to arrive at these findings, alarming though they are if you’re on the wrong side of the tape measure but encouraging if you’re on the right side.

Of all the research presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Malaga, Spain, in May 2025, this was the one that probably grabbed people’s attention more than anything else because it found that obesity before the age of 30 nearly doubles the risk of dying before your time. Nearly doubles!

It may not be cheerful reading but it’s hard to deny the science, which argues that between 17 and 29 is the “critical life stage” in long-term health. If we keep slim in those years, we are much more likely to avoid such life-shortening conditions as cancer, type2 diabetes and heart disease.

There’s a gender difference here too. Obese males under 30 are 79 percent more likely to die than slim ones while obese women of the same age are 84 percent more likely. As The London Times writes about the research: “Overall, every pound gained in weight during early adulthood increases the risk of early death by more than 20 percent.” Slightly morbid reading.

The researchers at Lund University are in the forefront of obesity research and they come up with thought-provoking studies almost as a matter of routine. For instance, one of their recent findings is that a simple tape measure is one of the best tools for establishing the likelihood of obese men suffering from various forms of cancer. Rather than measuring body mass index (BMI), which is more complicated, just run the tape around the waist.

Based on 340,000 men over a 38-year period, this particular study debunks some earlier thinking. As the paper writes, “BMI is a measure of body size but does not provide information on fat distribution, whereas waist circumference is a proxy more closely related to abdominal adiposity”.

To put it more simply, if you’ve got to loosen your belt you might be heading in the wrong direction.

I’ve committed that phrase to memory:  abdominal adiposity.  Apparently, men are more likely to store fat viscerally (abdominally and more obviously) while women are more prone to acquire subcutaneous and peripheral fat (more generally and more discreetly).

In one study after another Lund University’s scientists highlight the value of keeping fit. In another long-term exercise covering no less than 800,000 Swedes, Norwegians and Austrians, they show that metabolically unhealthy people – that is, those with high blood pressure, blood glucose levels and blood fats – run a higher risk of certain forms of cancer. This is regardless of body weight.

Once again, these conclusions shake up earlier thinking. “Being metabolically unhealthy is often linked to obesity, but you don’t have to be overweight to have a metabolically unhealthy status”, says Tanja Stocks, the study’s leader.

And there’s more! In 2024 the institution conducted another in-depth study, this time of (wow!) 4.1 million Swedes, which is nearly half the entire population, and learned that obesity may make people vulnerable to over 100 different types of cancer.  I didn’t know there were that many, but there you are.

I've said it before (and I'll say it again), life’s more fun when you're fit! Often longer too.

Coming up, Lund University is combining with other Swedish institutions  on a project called Turning the tide of obesity to health whose findings will surely come up with further useful information.

Meantime it’s food for thought that health scientists say that throughout Europe the number of overweight and/or obese children is rising dramatically.

Maybe, together, we can help to address that and give our children (and grandchildren) a healthier start.