[edanm]

This is very interesting, thanks for the detailed list. I will check out the podcast.

That said... this is one of those cases where I have to defer to the experts here. Basically every expert I've heard on this topic has said that being obese is unhealthy. And while you (summarizing the podcast) raise a lot of interesting points, I don't think I'm in a position to disagree with the scientific consensus here. And it's not like the people studying this stuff haven't thought about a lot of these objections themselves.

Also, anecdotally, it seems fairly common sense that people who are obese are less healthy in many ways. I know that's just an impression, but c'mon, it's a pretty strong one, to me at least. I've seen so many people go from finding it hard to walk much without breathing hard when overweight, to being fine after. Just as an example of someone famous with many health problems that got much better- Penn Jillette.

[smcl]

Yep sorry it wasn't my intention to hide that - the consensus is that being very fat is bad for you in various ways. But specifically how fat and how much worse in which ways is a bit of a crapshoot because it seems some of the research on it is a bit methologically flawed or inconsistent or ideologically driven (the ep references a bit of back/forth between Katherine Flegal and Walter Willett on that which was very interesting).

But yeah does feel right (as an anecdotal aside I feel "healthier" at 84kg than when I was 94kg) and as I said in the extreme it does seem to be correct - the same is true for very thin people. But we're mistreating thin and fat people alike by boiling down a lot of health problems down to a single dimension and saying those who fall on one side of a line are healthy and those on the other aren't. I'm not suggesting you were doing just that - you seem to appreciate the nuance to it - but many people do and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't that kind of person at one point in my past.

[edanm]

Oh I don't think you were hiding anything, I'm just saying a single podcast is not enough to convince me of anything.

That said,I started listening to it... It's fantastic. They've made really great points so far. A bunch of questionable stuff too that I disagree with, but lots of great points.

And even not just about obesity. I think they made some analogies that will stick with me about correlations.

I have no idea who these are, but I'm super thankful you introduced me to them I'm definitely going to try more of their stuff.