[boringds]

I'd like to understand why, this doesn't sound obvious to me? Unhealthy overweight people, I can picture it, but otherwise? An athlete at 240 lbs might not see any benefit whatsoever for instance. In other cases I can also picture people gaining weight feeling much better under the right circumstances.

All in one weight in itself doesn't mean much in isolation. That's why you have people with a high BMI that are healthier than people with a "normal" one.

[bumby]

I suspect its because health is complicated, but eating less calories correlates with many more healthy outcomes.

>An athlete at 240 lbs

As a contrived example, somebody this big (athlete or not), is probably at an increased risk of sleep apnea. I know of some competitive athletes (with visible abs, no less) that were surprised to learn they have sleep apnea. After a CPAP they felt better. Alternatively, they could probably have lost weight (but no longer be as competitive in their chosen sport.) Some of the risk factors (gender, neck circumference) aren't the typical proxies we use to subjectively assess health as a layperson.

>That's why you have people with a high BMI that are healthier than people with a "normal" one.

This can be true, but it is not generalizable. Last I heard, something like 1% of people with a high BMI would fall into this camp.

[watwut]

> but eating less calories correlates with many more healthy outcomes

Like, at some point, dying, lower heart rate, loosing hair, being cold, your weins collapsing, body eating own muscles.

[jumpman500]

I meant overweight/unhealthy people losing weight would feel better. Totally agree that a heavier athlete wouldn't necessarily feel better with weight loss.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Weight is strongly correlated to risk of cancer, heart disease, etc. and BMI strongly correlates to body-fat percentage. If you are a gym-rat outlier then congrats but that doesn't make BMI useless.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/

[dev1ycan]

I don't know but losing weight and feeling much more agile it just improves your life altogether, waking up is easier, moving around is easier, everything in general just feels "better" plus your mind feels more focused.

[alistairSH]

An athlete isn't going to lose 10% of their body weight through a dietary change - they're already eating pretty well.

I suppose they could lose 10% through caloric restriction, but that wasn't part of this study.

[Decabytes]

Dropping 10lbs reduces weight on joints by 40 lbs. This can contribute towards feeling better

[chrisweekly]

Please explain how 10lbs translates to 40lbs?

[yareal]

Mechanical advantage and impact. Weight is not just a constant force in our joints, and it's not applied evenly. As an example, imagine holding forty pounds at arms length vs wearing it in a backpack or letting it dangle to the floor. The forces on the shoulders from all three are radically different.

Additionally, when you walk or run you don't place only and exactly the force of the weight of your body down. Each foot is loaded with an impact and the forces are distributed up the leg. What your knee experiences is a dynamic and spiky load.

[amit9gupta]

. . . "A weight reduction of 9.8 N (1 kg) was associated with reductions of 40.6 N and 38.7 N in compressive and resultant forces, respectively." . . .

. . . "Our results indicate that each pound of weight lost will result in a 4-fold reduction in the load exerted on the knee per step during daily activities. Accumulated over thousands of steps per day, a reduction of this magnitude would appear to be clinically meaningful. " . . .

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15986358/

[alistairSH]

I assumed it was a typo - 10%. Though the math still doesn't work out for the 40lb reduction of weight on joints.

[shagie]

It's one of the "true but over simplified".

Remember that pounds is a unit of force - not mass.

There's the set of "tech neck" images (example https://www.vital-balance.com/en/tech-neck/ though many more can be found) where it shows what the force on the neck is from the head. At 0°, it's 10-12 lbs of force down. If you've got your head tilted at 45° looking at a phone, the infographic says that its 49 lbs of force on the neck.