Can you be fit and fat?

I was finishing up dinner tonight when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID thing and realized it was my buddy Steve, the one we call the Jewish Rambo here at Vinnie’s Blog and Country Club. We chatted about meaningless stuff for a while, then he said, “I haven’t seen a blog from you lately. What’s the matter?” I reminded Steve that we put up something new every day on the blog. Beside Andy’s Recipes, we also put up items from around the internet. I guess he forgets I have a day job. We went on to talk about a few other things. Before we got off the phone, I told Steve to throw out a subject for my next blog. The phone went silent for a few seconds. Then he uttered these words: “Can a person be both fit and fat?” The example he gave was a lineman in the NFL. I told you that to tell you this. I’ve defined fitness before on this blog, but it’s always good to define it again. I mean, what does “fit” really mean? It means “fit” to do the activity at hand. An example is a fit swimmer. If you get caught in a flood or get thrown from a boat, you have a greater chance of survival than a person who is a fit jogger who never swims. Getting back to the NFL. The guy who is fit to play on the line is not fit to be a running back or wide receiver. Each position is a specialty position. The wide receiver has to be fast and nimble. A lineman needs to have quick feet and enough girth to stop opposing linemen. To this point, I think the NFL is running into a real problem, not to add to the problems it already has. But I digress. The average lineman during the first Super Bowl in the late 1960s weighed around 240 pounds. Remember Jerry Kramer and the boys? The average lineman now tips the scales at over 300 pounds. These guys are literally becoming sumo wrestlers without the fancy diaper. Is it healthy? Hell no. As a matter of fact I saw a report on this on Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports. Some of these guys die before they reach 50. Under Vinnie’s definition of whether you can be fit and fat at the same time, I say yes. And yes I used myself in the third person. Will a fat person have the same quality of life and longevity as their thin counterparts? I think the answer is definitely no.