As some of you already know, I have been an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance since the journal was created back in 2005. The stated mission of the Int J Sports Physiol Perform is to advance the knowledge of sport and exercise physiologists, sport scientists, sport physicians, and sport-performance researchers. The journal promotes the publication of research in sport physiology and related disciplines that has direct practical application to enhancing sport performance, preventing decrements in performance, or enhancing recovery of athletes.

One of my tasks as Associate Editor is to write the editorial for the journal every so often. The September 2011 issue just published my latest editorial, entitled “From superfit to superfat”, which deals with the similarities between the metabolic changes that highly trained athletes suffer when they stop training, and the characteristics of the metabolic syndrome, which is induced by insufficient physical exercise and poor dietary habits and is fast becoming a global epidemic of apocalyptic proportions.

The editorial starts as follows:

“Suppose you live in a Western society. You have westernized sedentary behavior. You eat a Western diet. You love sports. This probably means that after a good night’s sleep you drove a fast car to work, where you sat all day looking at your computer screen before driving back home to sit in a comfortable chair in front of your flat-screen television to watch your favorite sport, well provided with a snack consisting of packaged food full of saturated fat and processed sugars. Besides having a nice house, a fast car, a good job, plenty of food, and a high-tech TV, chances are you also have a cluster of abdominal obesity, hypertension, disturbed glucose metabolism, and dyslipidemia; that is, you suffer from metabolic syndrome.1 You are one among the superfat watching the superfit. But if you ever wonder whether the superfit can also become superfat, the answer is yes, they can. And it would not take long!”

You can read the full editorial here.

Reference

Mujika, I. From superfit to superfat. Int. J. Sports Physiol. Perform. 6 (3): 293-294, 2011.