Plus-sized athletes tell US First Lady: Fat can be fit

A lifelong acolyte of exercise and fitness, Sandy Shaffer works out three times a week, eats a diet loaded with fruits and vegetables, and somehow finds time to teach a weekly aerobics class. But at 1.65 metres and 145 kilograms, Ms Shaffer is also considered obese.

Yet the plus-sized sports enthusiast insists that the label says little about the generally-excellent state of her health.

That is the single biggest problem she has with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” health initiative.

“I’m glad they encourage people to move, but it’s still a negative message,” said Ms Shaffer, an administrator at a New York City labour union.

“You can be healthy even if you’re 300 pounds,” she added.

First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” signature initiative, which marked its first anniversary just this week, aims to help kids slim down by eating better and getting more active.

By and large the fitness community has embraced the First Lady’s signature programme, but a contingent of health experts and aficionados balk at equating improving one’s health with lowering one’s weight.

They say it is possible to be extremely fit and also “overweight” by societal norms.

“What if they end up with all the health benefits of movement, but they don’t end up losing weight? Since this is an anti-obesity thing, would they not be failures?” asked Ms Shaffer.

“Ballet dancers look good, but you wouldn’t necessarily call them healthy if you look at what they have to do to keep at that weight,” she said.

“If you take weight out of the picture and take diet out of the picture, you might get people to move longer and more often,” she said.

GeMar Neloms, a physical trainer in Silver Spring, Maryland, like Shaffer has been active for decades in the realm of sports, including as a varsity lacrosse player at Oberlin College in Ohio.

She teaches a popular spinning class at Washington Sports Club in Silver Spring, Maryland, where many of her students tell her that she is a role model as a “real-sized” fitness instructor.

Ms Neloms has attained an admirable level of fitness over the years in spite of a body mass index that suggests she should be considered overweight.

“I can cycle circles around a lot of thinner people. I can hold a plank position longer than a lot of thinner people,” she said of a challenging yoga pose.

She confesses that she would like to be a bit thinner, but only if it happens organically as a result of her efforts to attain greater fitness – not as a primary goal.

“Appearance plays a part, but it’s not my priority, my priority has to be my overall health,” said Ms Neloms, an officer at a Washington-area non-profit.

She added that as an African-American woman she felt that metrics for what constitutes thinness may be inaccurate.

“We’re built differently across cultures,” she said. “We all have different body types.”

Kenneth Cooper, one of America’s leading medical experts on health and obesity, said that the awareness that a robust body need not mean poor health is something that he has stressed for years.