Study: Being fat at 40 cuts years off life

Study: Being fat at 40 cuts years off life

Smoking adds to drop in life expectancy

(CNN) --Two out of three Americans have an ongoing battle of the bulge, and
most know all that extra weight can contribute to life-threatening ailments
such as stroke, diabetes and heart disease. But just how many years will
the fat take from you?

A new study shows for the first time how much life expectancy is shortened
for those who are overweight or obese at 40. For smokers, the statistics
are even worse.

"If you're overweight, you basically live three years less ... and if
you're obese, you live approximately six to seven years less," says Dr.
Robert Eckel with the American Heart Association.

Scientists have long known that overweight people have shorter life
expectancies, but few large-scale studies have been able to pinpoint how
many years they lose.

The study by Dutch researchers appears in Tuesday's edition of the Annals
of Internal Medicine. It looks at data collected from 3,457 adults age 28
to 62 in Framingham, Massachusetts, between 1948 and 1990.

So what's the difference between overweight and obese? Doctors use body
mass index -- BMI -- to measure the ratio of weight to height.

A person with a BMI of 25 or over is classified overweight, and a BMI of 30
or over means one is obese.

For example, a 40-year-old woman who is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 150
pounds is considered overweight, with a BMI of 25. She can expect three
years cut from her life expectancy, according to the study. If that same
woman weighed 180 pounds, her BMI would be 30, she would be considered
obese and would lose seven years.

Men are hit almost as hard. A 6-feet-tall man who weighs more than 184
pounds is considered overweight. If he weighed 221 pounds, he would be
obese and could expect to lose six years.

Smokers who have the middle-aged spread are hit with a double-whammy

Obese smokers can subtract seven more years from their life expectancy.
According to the study's figures, that means obese, smoking women will live
14 years less and men 13 years less than their nonsmoking, lower-weight
neighbors.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies have also shown that
people are getting fatter, younger.

So what's a person to do?

"The important message from this study is, let's work on prevention. Let's
work with young people to prevent that increase in body fat," Eckel said.

Eckel recommends losing approximately a pound a week until you reach your
ideal weight, by cutting out 500 calories a day, which is a realistic goal
to set and could result in a 5 to 10 percent loss in body fat.