Forget the popular theory that you can be overweight or obese and healthy, Toronto researchers say.

Excess poundage catches up with you in the long haul, concludes an analysis by scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital.

They looked into the evidence behind the much-hyped theory that you can carry extra pounds and still be healthy. This has been a headline-grabbing finding of many studies.

But in a study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers from Mount Sinai’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute have found the theory does not hold for subjects who were tracked for more than a decade.

“It is a myth because studies that have shown that were flawed in the sense that they did not track people long enough,” said Dr. Bernard Zinman, director of Mount Sinai’s diabetes centre and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.

His team conducted a meta-analysis of eight previous studies, involving more than 61,000 individuals, with a mean follow-up period of 11.4 years.

They found those who were overweight and obese and had normal-range readings of cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure were at increased risk of premature death, heart attack, heart failure and stroke over the long term, compared to metabolically healthy normal-weight persons.

Specifically, they found that those who were healthy and obese — with a BMI of 30 or higher — were at 24 per cent greater risk of premature death, heart attack, heart failure and stroke after 10 years.

And those who were healthy and overweight — with a body mass index of between 25 and 29.9 — were at 21 per cent greater risk.

“The idea that we don’t need to target health-care resources toward obese people whose lab tests are normal turns out to be false,” said lead author and post-doctoral fellow Dr. Caroline Kramer.

An accompanying editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine says that the study “provides strong evidence that healthy obesity is a myth.”

It goes on to say that obesity is taking a toll on health and well-being.

“Accepting that no level of obesity is healthy is an important step toward deciding how best to use our resources and our political will to develop and implement strategies to combat the obesity epidemic,” the editorial says.

But Jean-Pierre Després, director of research at the Québec Heart and Lung Institute argues that it is, indeed, possible to carry extra pounds and be healthy.

“This is still true. Some people can be healthy if they are overweight or moderately obese if they eat well, if they are physical activity, if they are fit and if they low levels fat in their abdominal cavity,” said Després, whose research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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For the last 25 years, he has studied and published papers on the link between health and “visceral fat” in the abdominal cavity.

“If you have very little fat in your abdominal cavity, our risk of heart disease is much, much lower,” he said, adding that the Toronto study did not control for that.