Does fitter mean healthier?

Depends what you mean by the term "fitter" as it's such a broad term. Are you referring purely from a cardiovascular perspective or strength or both? For example bodybuilders are extremely strong and a lot of them would argue they are fit. But a physically great appearance is by no means an indication that they are healthy on the inside. Just look at all the professional body builders dying at a young age. Also ultra endurance runners are not generally known to live extremely long lives - e.g into their 90s. I believe the answer is that ultimate health comes from a balance of fitness and what you put into your body. Also to a lesser extent the amount of stress in your life, genetics and your surroundings can contribute to your overall health.

If you are not fat, you will probably have a healthier pancreas and liver. If you are fit, you're likely to have healthy lungs, heart and nervous system.

One thing running may make less healthy is your gut. In my opinion, runners get skinny because they can't keep food in for long.

Not sure how fitness would affect the spleen.

I only mentioned the spleen as a joke but now I find humans have the same sort of extra blood supply in the spleen that horses do, albeit less of it, only 240ml. But that's an extra few %. And apparently it can be available during exercise!

So maybe if you race too much you deplete your spleen and have to recover.

These terms are not sufficiently well defined for a meaningful answer, but the way these terms are commonly used, most people here would probably agree that fit is correlated with healthy but healthy may or may not be fit depending on extent of training. The stress adaptations for fitness are healthy provided you don’t venture close to the point of breakdown where it is possible to be extremely fit yet unhealthy, e.g., classic overtraining and/or under-nutrition syndromes.

Let's talk about HRV, we know high HRV is highly correlated to healthy life.

Training lower HRV on daily basis, so how training (to get fitter/faster) can help in creating healthy and longer life span?

Surely low HRV means stress (mainly from training), if we we are on top of sleep, nutrition etc.

So the only variable for low HRV is training or stressing the body for adaptation in order to get fitter or faster.

Men and women are so different. If a male has body fat percent greater than 17 1/2%, as body fat gets worse, lab values will get worse: blood sugar, fatty liver, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol elevated, etc. Women, in general will not see bad lab values until a woman has more than 37.5% body fat. A man at (17 1/2 to 22.5)% body fat, if determined & focused can quickly turn things around and get to a healthy and fit (7 1/2 to 12 1/2)% body fat. Elite women athletes often are in (12 1/2 to 17 1/2)% body range. Being elite fit and being healthy for women is often an either or. Does a woman want to be elite fit? Does a woman want to be healthy? A female athlete has to pick one.

For women, pick one. Fit or healthy wrote:

Men and women are so different. If a male has body fat percent greater than 17 1/2%, as body fat gets worse, lab values will get worse: blood sugar, fatty liver, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol elevated, etc. Women, in general will not see bad lab values until a woman has more than 37.5% body fat. A man at (17 1/2 to 22.5)% body fat, if determined & focused can quickly turn things around and get to a healthy and fit (7 1/2 to 12 1/2)% body fat. Elite women athletes often are in (12 1/2 to 17 1/2)% body range. Being elite fit and being healthy for women is often an either or. Does a woman want to be elite fit? Does a woman want to be healthy? A female athlete has to pick one.

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There is no evidence that elite women have to choose between being fit and being healthy. I fear that the move to talk openly about eating disorders among competitive female runners has had some unintended consequences--one being that it has normalized EDs and led many to think that most competitive and elite women are suffering from REDS or lower-level ED symptoms. Though EDs are disproportionaly high among competitive runners, there are many women who train at a high level, have very low body fat, and are healthy. You cannot assume that a woman is unhealthy simply because she is very lean.

For women, pick one. Fit or healthy wrote:

Men and women are so different. If a male has body fat percent greater than 17 1/2%, as body fat gets worse, lab values will get worse: blood sugar, fatty liver, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol elevated, etc. Women, in general will not see bad lab values until a woman has more than 37.5% body fat. A man at (17 1/2 to 22.5)% body fat, if determined & focused can quickly turn things around and get to a healthy and fit (7 1/2 to 12 1/2)% body fat. Elite women athletes often are in (12 1/2 to 17 1/2)% body range. Being elite fit and being healthy for women is often an either or. Does a woman want to be elite fit? Does a woman want to be healthy? A female athlete has to pick one.

+1, in that there’s truth here but with the caveat that not all elite women need pick, and as for the most prominent potentially unhealthiness indicator, amenorrhea, it’s not clear if it’s “unhealthy” or in what sense exactly it should be viewed as such given that in almost all cases, it reverts to normal, and elite women athletes don’t appear to be any more challenged than the average woman or career-aspirational women in bearing children. Perhaps temporary amenorrhea under extreme physical stress is physiologically speaking a feature, not a bug. Elite men are vulnerable to low testosterone as well, which appears to be an indicator that nature abhors reproducing under extreme physical stress, which would make evolutionary sense.

As for the other issues related to low body fat, essentially REDS symptoms including anorexia, its not clear that they are limited to women or present an elite-fit-or-healthy dilemma provided state-of-the-art nutritional science applied intelligently in training as opposed to blindly insisting on a body fat percentage target for the sake of it.

I agree with this, not all competitive female runners have unhealthily low body fat (although many do unfortunately). Joan Benoit Samuelson talked about still being able to menstruate during her competitive years because she maintained a high enough body fat percentage. It's a tricky balance and unfortunately I think genetics plays a big role. If the BF% you require to be a competitive runner is below the threshold of being reproductively healthy, there isn't much that can be done to change that.

Everyone knows women are the most attractive and most fertile, (22 1/2 to 32 1/2)% body fat.

In addition, men who log more than 50 miles per week may lower T-level, men who log more than 75 miles per week most likely will lower T-level. Of course magically, many elite or near male Marathoners have T-levels near maximum allowable.

Men who log more than 75 miles per week are less desirable as a mating partner. Women prefer sprinters and throwers.

Still cries at a good film

Still kisses with saliva

No longer empty and frantic

Like a cat

Tied to a stick

That's driven into

Frozen winter shlt (the ability to laugh at weakness)

Calm

Fitter, healthier and more productive

A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

I think that a large part of the issue is the method in which one gets to/maintains a low body fat percentage. Ammenohea is caused by an energy imbalance more so than as a result of low body fat. Attempting to get lean though an overly aggressive caloric deficit is a common reason why female runners lose their periods and develop RED-S. In fact, it's recommended that athletes undergo a caloric deficit of no more than 300-500 calories/day. Additionally excessively limiting dietary fat and carbohydrates can also contribute to ammenohea in active females. This is why some females lose their periods when on a ketogenic diet.

Unfortunately, when it comes to reaching race weight while maintaining health, slow and steady wins the race. However, adding in frequent resistance training (4-5X/week) can help significantly improve body composition despite slow weight loss. Even in the absence of weight loss, partaking in resistance training if the athete is not already doing so, can help reduce body fat and improve strength to weight ratio, being as another important component to running fast.

I agreee.

Is less fit healthier?

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Still cries at a good film

Still kisses with saliva

No longer empty and frantic

Like a cat

Tied to a stick

That's driven into

Frozen winter shlt (the ability to laugh at weakness)

Calm

Fitter, healthier and more productive

A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

expensive vitamin pills and wheat germ on your windowsill

your schedules hectic and you got no time to kill

you're earning money and spending it the right way

you're just in such a rush you don't know if its night or day

5:30 get up and you run, run, run

then you work eight hours slaving under the gun

your little world's based on lies lies lies

always rushing but you're never ever satisfied

healthy body sick mind

you're working overtime

healthy body sick mind

too hectic too hectic

healthy body sick mind

its just a matter of time

sick body sick mind

the money you spend on running shoes could feed me for a week

your plans are laid so well you can't even sleep

pursuit of happiness got your life locked up under martial law

you got everything to lose so you're paranoid about some fatal flaw

Exactly. Fit definition is confusing for most people and most of the times they’re wrong. It applies to runners as well some elite athletes are not as healthy as you think, specially women.

Extremes are always bad even running can be bad for you. Let’s say you’re a very competitive athlete that runs 80-100 mi per week and tries to keep up with this kind of running in your 50’s and 60’s well I would not be surprised if a person like this develops dilated cardiomyopathy and dies in the 60’s or 70’s. In the other hand you can be an relatively active person that runs few days, lifts some weights, bikes, eats healthy, don’t smoke and very likely this type of lifestyle can make you reach 80’s, 90’s. Some people don’t even do any highly aerobic stuff in their lives and make it well pass 90’s.

Was reading a study. Basically those people who eat very little calories and expend very little tend to live the longest on average.