In April of 2016, Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker sided with the NFL and allowed the league to suspend New England quarterback Tom Brady for four games for his part in what’s become known as Deflategate. At that time, Parker also acknowledged something else: that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s power to act as judge and jury in this matter — and other similar player-conduct matters — is “somewhat unorthodox.”

But the power given to Goodell in Article 46 of the collectively bargained agreement between the league and its players — yes, the players’ union actually agreed to a contract that allowed this! — empowered him to function as both.

If Circuit Judge Parker were asked to rule on a far less significant matter — whether or not the Carbon County Commissioner of Optimal Health (aka the Fitness Master) can serve as judge and jury for the hypothetical trial of today’s headline — his rationale would probably be the same. He’d permit it because the Times News has agreed to publish my views via this column, though he’d probably acknowledge having me settle that question to be “somewhat unorthodox.”

After all, I am the guy who worked out for a bit more than 18 hours a week (by riding or racing the bike, lifting weights to retain some upper-body strength, and stretching to facilitate quicker recovery and keep the arthritis in my hips at bay) during my seven-week summer vacation. So can I be objective enough to decide when enough is enough when it comes to working out?

Probably not.

But I don’t have to be. Not if I can cite studies that aid my opinion, such as the one led by Dr. Ian Neeland at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and published in Journal of the American Heart Association this July about heart health.

Neeland and his colleagues found that gaining even a little bit of weight increases the incidence of heart failure. One reason for this: excess weight makes the heart work harder than it should.

Ergo, if being fanatical about your fitness keeps off excess weight it has to be a good thing.

The study, outlined in an article found at Medical News Today, tracked 1,262 participants who had an average age of 44 at the onset. Fifty-seven percent of the participants were women, 44 percent of them were black, and 36 percent were obese, and all participants had not experienced any heart problems prior to the study. At its conclusion seven years later, all were checked for thickening and enlargement of the left heart ventricle — a harbinger of heart disease.

Those who had increased their weight over the seven years by as little as 5 percent were far more likely to have developed thickening and/or enlargement of the left heart ventricle — even if the increase in weight did not decree them to be overweight by the medical definition. Moreover, their hearts were found to be weaker overall, making the pumping of blood more difficult and the incidence of heart failure more likely.

This study isn’t the only recent one that suggests you can’t be too fanatical about fitness when it comes to heart health. Research performed at two colleges in the United Kingdom and led by doctors Camille Lassale and Ioanna Tzoulaki found that the use of the medical term “metabolically healthy obesity,” which is currently applied when you have a higher-than-normal body mass index (BMI) but no identifiable health issues, is really a misnomer.

Contrary to that medical term — and today’s pervading opinion — this research shows that you cannot really be both fit and fat.

In this study of more than 500,000 Europeans, subjects were deemed “metabolically unhealthy” if they exhibited three or more negative metabolic factors, such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, abnormal triglyceride levels, low levels of “good” cholesterol, or a larger-than-normal waist size. The researchers then created two subset groups: those who were metabolically unhealthy and obese or overweight and those who were metabolically unhealthy yet had — according to the BMI — a healthy weight.

In other words, the second group contained people currently viewed as both fit and fat.

When the obese or overweight and metabolically unhealthy group was compared to a control group of 10,000 metabolically healthy individuals, the expected occurred. They showed double the risk of developing heart disease.

But the fit-and-fat group had an increased risk of developing heart disease, too. In fact, even when the obese were excluded, those considered to be merely overweight were found to have a 26 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease than the control group.

As a result, Dr. Tzoulaki shared this with Medical News Today: “I think there is no longer this concept of healthy obese. If anything, our study shows that people with excess weight who might be classed as ‘healthy’ haven’t yet developed an unhealthy metabolic profile. That comes later in the timeline, then they have an event, such as a heart attack.”