Using the article “Fat but fit? Big gray area confounds scientists“.
“Is it possible to be fat and fit? Perhaps, researchers say, but losing weight may make you even better off.”
Message: Don’t get your hopes up, fatty, exercise and a healthy diet are only worthwhile if you lose weight—if your weight is stable you might as well skip the gym.
“No excuse to pack on pounds”
Message: Fat people really want to be MORE fat and are looking for excuses to gain weight. Always.
“Obesity is a major public health issue”
Message: Fat people are a drain on society.
“Is it really protective to be metabolically healthy?”
Message: Health markers like cholesterol or blood pressure or insulin sensitivity can be valuable in helping thin people avoid problems, but are only valuable in fat people if they reinforce that weight loss is needed.
Then there’s a bit about a 2008 study I’d like to track down, where 20 metabolically healthy obese women and 24 metabolically at-risk women went on a six-month diet to lose weight and some of the metabolically healthy women ended up decreasing their insulin sensitivity. Then the author contrasts this with a more recent study that used diet and exercise — you remember exercise, that thing which often improves insulin sensitivity? — and found that insulin sensitivity didn’t decrease while losing weight in the study that used exercise.
Yes, this does appear to be comparing apples with oranges and saying, hey, apples are really orange! Or something. Head, meet desk. And nothing about how weight was affected long-term, of course, because long-term studies are more expensive and tend not to show much weight loss and are therefore depressing or something.
Then, finally, at the bottom of the article:
[G]iven that most people fail to maintain weight loss (and findings that yo-yo weight loss and gain may be psychologically and physically harmful), the best message for the metabolically healthy subset is unclear.
“Most people fail to maintain weight loss” but this may only trouble the “metabolically healthy” fat people? Bwah? Hello?
“Whether we should be actively promoting weight loss knowing that over 90 percent of these individuals are going to fail is a question that I don’t think anyone can answer at this point,” [Jennifer Kuk, a professor at York University in Toronto] said.
Here’s an answer for you: NO. No, don’t promote weight loss. No, don’t push weight loss. Permanent, sustainable weight loss is not possible for most people, and for many, dieting is tied to long-term WEIGHT GAIN.
The frustrating thing about this article? There’s good facts there about how fat people who are metabolically fit tend to be more active. There’s a closing quote about how exercise can increase your fitness, whether it causes weight loss or not. This could have been an article on how exercise can be good for you and that it’s not about weight loss.
Instead, it’s a near-Bingo.
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