The short answer is “yes“.

And as for what that means for your heart and/or all-cause mortality risk: it’s just as good as being fit at a smaller size, and furthermore, it’s better than being less fit at a smaller size.

Here’s the longer answer:

The science

A research team did a systematic review looking at multiple large cohort studies examining the associations between:

• Cardiorespiratory fitness and cardiovascular disease risk
• Cardiorespiratory fitness and all-cause mortality
• BMI and cardiovascular disease risk
• BMI and all-cause mortality

However, they also took this further, and tabulated the data such that they could also establish the cardiovascular disease mortality risk and all-cause mortality risk of:

1. Unfit people with “normal” BMI
2. Unfit people with “overweight” BMI
3. Unfit people with “obese” BMI
4. Fit people with “normal” BMI
5. Fit people with “overweight” BMI
6. Fit people with “obese” BMI

Before we move on, let’s note for the record that BMI is a woeful system in any case, for enough reasons to fill a whole article:

When BMI Doesn’t Measure Up

Now, with that in mind, let’s get to the results:

What they found

For cardiovascular disease mortality risk of unfit people specifically, compared to fit people of “normal” BMI:

• Unfit people with “normal” BMI: 2.04x higher risk.
• Unfit people with “overweight” BMI: 2.58x higher risk.
• Unfit people with “obese” BMI: 3.35x higher risk

So here we can see that if you are unfit, then being heavier will indeed increase your CVD mortality risk.

For all-cause mortality risk of unfit people specifically, compared to fit people of “normal” BMI:

• Unfit people with “normal” BMI: 1.92x higher risk.
• Unfit people with “overweight” BMI: 1.82x higher risk.
• Unfit people with “obese” BMI: 2.04x higher risk

This time we see that if you are unfit, then being heavier or lighter than “overweight” will increase your all-cause mortality risk.

So, what about if you are fit? Then being heavier or lighter made no significant difference to either CVD mortality risk or all-cause mortality risk.

Fit individuals, regardless of weight category (normal, overweight, or obese), had significantly lower mortality risks compared to unfit individuals in any weight category.

Note: not just “compared to unfit individuals in their weight category”, but compared to unfit individuals in any weight category.

In other words, if you are obese and have good cardiorespiratory fitness, you will (on average) live longer than an unfit person with “normal” BMI.

You can find the paper itself here, if you want to examine the data and/or method:

Cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Ok, so how do I improve the kind of fitness that they measured?

They based their cardiorespiratory fitness on VO₂ Max, which scientific consensus holds to be a good measure of how efficiently your body can use oxygen—thus depending on your heart and lungs being healthy.

If you use a fitness tracker that tracks your exercise and your heart rate, it will estimate your VO₂ Max for you—to truly measure the VO₂ Max itself directly, you’ll need a lot more equipment; basically, access to a lab that tests this. But the estimates are fairly accurate, and so good enough for most personal purposes that aren’t hard-science research.

Next, you’ll want to do this:

53 Studies Later: The Best Way to Improve VO2 Max

Take care!

Getting Your Messy Life In Order

We’ve touched on this before by recommending the book, but today we’re going to give an overview of the absolute most core essentials of the “Getting Things Done” method. If you’re unfamiliar, this will be enough to get you going. If you’re already familiar, this may be a handy reminder!

First, you’ll need:

• A big table
• A block of small memo paper squares—post-it note sized, but no need to be sticky.
• A block of A4 printer paper
• A big trash bag

Gathering everything

Gather up not just all your to-dos, but: all sources of to-dos, too, and anything else that otherwise needs “sorting”.

Put them all in one physical place—a dining room table may have enough room. You’ll need a lot of room because you’re going to empty our drawers of papers, unopened (or opened and set aside) mail. Little notes you made for yourself, things stuck on the fridge or memo boards. Think across all areas of your life, and anything you’re “supposed” to do, write it down on a piece of paper. No matter what area of your life, no matter how big or small.

Whether it’s “learn Chinese” or “take the trash out”, write it down, one item per piece of paper (hence the block of little memo squares).

Sorting everything

Everything you’ve gathered needs one of three things to happen:

• You need to take some action (put it in a “to do” pile)
• You may need it later sometime (put it in a “to file” pile)
• You don’t need it (put it in the big trash bag for disposal)

What happens next will soothe you

• Dispose of the things you put for disposal
• File the things for filing in a single alphabetical filing system. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to get one, so write that down and add it to the “to do” pile.
• You will now process your “to dos”

Processing the “to dos”

The pile you have left is now your “inbox”. It’s probably huge; later it’ll be smaller, maybe just a letter-tray on your desk.

Many of your “to dos” are actually not single action items, they’re projects. If something requires more than one step, it’s a project.

Take each item one-by-one. Do this in any order; you’re going to do this as quickly as possible! Now, ask yourself: is this a single-action item that I could do next, without having to do something else first?

• If yes: put it in a pile marked “next action”
• If no: put it in a pile marked “projects”.

Take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it in half. Write “Next Action” on it, and put your pile of next actions inside it.

Take a sheet of A4 paper per project and write the name of the project on it, for example “Learn Chinese”, or “Do taxes”. Put any actions relating to that project inside it.

Likely you don’t know yet what the first action will be, or else it’d be in your “Next Action” pile, so add an item to each project that says “Brainstorm project”.

Processing the “Next Action” pile

Again you want to do this as quickly as possible, in any order.

For each item, ask yourself “Do I care about this?” If the answer is no, ditch that item, and throw it out. That’s ok. Things change and maybe we no longer want or need to do something. No point in hanging onto it.

For each remaining item, ask yourself “can this be done in under 2 minutes?”.

• If yes, do it, now. Throw away the piece of paper for it when you’re done.
• If no, ask yourself:”could I usefully delegate this to someone else?” If the answer is yes, do so.

If you can’t delegate it, ask yourself: “When will be a good time to do this?” and schedule time for it. A specific, written-down, clock time on a specific calendar date. Input that into whatever you use for scheduling things. If you don’t already use something, just use the calendar app on whatever device you use most.

The mnemonic for the above process is “Do/Defer/Delegate/Ditch”

Processing projects:

If you don’t know where to start with a project, then figuring out where to start is your “Next Action” for that project. Brainstorm it, write down everything you’ll need to do, and anything that needs doing first.

The end result of this is:

• You will always, at any given time, have a complete (and accessible) view of everything you are “supposed” to do.
• You will always, at any given time, know what action you need to take next for a given project.
• You will always, when you designate “work time”, be able to get straight into a very efficient process of getting through your to-dos.

Keeping on top of things

• Whenever stuff “to do something with/about” comes to you, put it in your physical “inbox” place—as mentioned, a letter-tray on a desk should suffice.
• At the start of each working day, quickly process things as described above. This should be a small daily task.
• Once a week, do a weekly review to make sure you didn’t lose sight of something.
• Monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews can be a good practice too.

How to do those reviews? Topic for another day, perhaps.

Or:

Check out the website / Check out GTD apps / Check out the book