You can be fat and fit, women across the fat sisterhood are being told. But how fat is really fat? "Studies have shown that people up to 20 per cent over their ideal weight live longer and more healthy lives than those at their ideal weight", says Dr Jill Welbourne at the Eating Disorders Clinic of the Bristol Royal Infirmary. "Being very fat can present problems," she says. "If you cant reach your feet you cant clean them. But being a little cuddly is good, being underweight is not good at all." The fat women sound dire warnings for most women who are always just starting a diet or finishing a diet. The danger, they cite dieticians as saying, is in the yo-yo pattern of gaining and losing weight, not in gaining it and keeping it. "The last seven anorexics I treated have been patients who cut out fat and sugar and took strenuous exercises to become underweight", Dr Wellbourne said.