For the past decade there has been a heated debate in the scientific community as to which is more detrimental to health and longevity: being overweight or being unfit. With approximately 55% of women in the United States estimated to be overweight*, this is an important question. Last month, Dr. Steven Blair and colleagues at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas published the results of a long-term study on over 9,000 women addressing this question. Their results demonstrated that cardiovascular fitness, as measured on a treadmill, was much more important than body weight in reducing overall mortality. In fact, the women who were overweight but were moderately to highly fit were at a significantly lower risk of dying over the more than 10-year follow-up period than the women in the ideal body weight category who were in the low fitness category. This research supports earlier findings reported for men.

So does that mean that it doesn’t matter whether you are overweight or not. No! We know that moderate weight loss is important for reducing type 2 diabetes and osteoarthritis. But what this research and the cumulative evidence to date suggest is that we need to focus more on fitness and less on losing weight. Our society is obsessed with weight loss. What we need to have is a healthy, strong message for women of all ages to concentrate on fitness first and then sound, moderate weight loss if necessary.

I am thrilled that we are seeing reductions in fractures with such a simple strength training protocol. I am confident that more and more research is going to be published over the next few years on the importance of exercise, and strength training in particular, on reducing fractures in older women.