First: Does anyone have a full text link to the study? The NEJM link is fee only.

You can read the study here (pdf link). Shhh.

# BStu Writes:
All of these constant studies seem to gleefully ignore the fact that this is the status quo opinion. This is the dominant view point in our country. This has been the guiding philosophy of all medical treatment of fat (and thin!) patients for decades.

First: If you are going to subject the studies to careful analysis because you believe the medical collective is biased, you should also pay attention to the background of Linda Bacon, cited above. All things being equal, I generally suspect the CDC is going to provide more accurate statistical analysis than someone from the NAAFA. I look forward to reading the study myself, if I can find a link.

Science is fairly decent at this. If obesity is shown to be healthy, then doctors, at least, will admit it. OTOH if it shown to be UNhealthy then doctors will admit that, too.

And what have the results been? They’ve had their day. They do nothing but offer an endless parade of failing “treatments” intending to turn fat people into thin people.
The only thing they’ve been shown to do is to make people fatter.

Um, did I miss that study? There are lots of reasons people get fatter. Eating less and exercising more are not usually the reasons, though.

Weight loss doesn’t make people healthier.

Relative to what? It’s unhealthy to be anorexic. But the world is not divided into fat people and anorexic people. There’s a large middle ground.

I have read a lot of stuff over the years which links obesity to a variety of conditions ranging from shortness of brreath to joint and back problems to sexual isssues. I am not sure what the top research is on the field. But I would be VERY surprised if weight was unrelated to health.

Overweight is trickier. Going up one point on the BMI from “normal” to “overweight” doesn’t instantly transform one into an unhealthy person. And going DOWN one point from “obese” to “overweight” dooesn’t make you healthy, either. But one cannot get to obesity (which IS known to be unhealthy) without going through “overweight” en route. If one can avoid becoming overweight or “very” overweight, one also avoid becoming obese.

It [weight loss] doesn’t make people happier.

I’m not sure this is entirely true. One can make an excellent argument that weight SHOULD BE unrelated to happiness, seeing as fat people are treated poorly by society. There’s nothing “innately unhappy” about weight gain. That said, pretty much everyone I know who has lost weight has felt happy about it.

It [weight loss] doesn’t even make people weigh less!

Well actually, weight loss DOES make people weigh less, or it wouldn’t be weight loss.

It has a success rate that wouldn’t be tolerated for experimental, last-ditch treatments of terminal cancer.

Yes, and people who don’t manage to lose weight don’t die as a result. It’s a poor analogy.

The reality is that weight gain can be bad but not be as bad as, say, cancer. And if it’s not as bad for you, then 1) it’s less important to cure, and 2) you’re willing to take less risk to cure it. It doesn’t mean weight gain is good, though.

Its time we tried something else. Drug dependancy, disordered eating, and organ amputation have all been exposed as insufficent at best and horrificly detrimental at worst. This must not go on.

Insufficiency is not an argument to stop something, as you surely know. And those things which are exposed as detrimental are changed. What do you suggest as an alternative?

All of these constant studies seem to gleefully ignore the fact that this is the status quo opinion. This is the dominant view point in our country. This has been the guiding philosophy of all medical treatment of fat (and thin!) patients for decades. And what have the results been? They’ve had their day. They do nothing but offer an endless parade of failing “treatments” intending to turn fat people into thin people. The only thing they’ve been shown to do is to make people fatter. Weight loss doesn’t make people healthier. It doesn’t make people happier. It doesn’t even make people weight less! It has a success rate that wouldn’t be tolerated for experimental, last-ditch treatments of terminal cancer. Its time we tried something else. Drug dependancy, disordered eating, and organ amputation have all been exposed as insufficent at best and horrificly detrimental at worst. This must not go on.

–Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller, “The Bad For You Cookbook”

Seriously, besides everything else: Don’t you get the impression from studies and people like this that there is something vaguely shameful about dying at ALL? like, you know, clearly if people would just TRY HARDER, they could’ve avoided this. tsk.

“Eat, drink, and be fucking merry,” you know? And maybe try and be a little bit fucking kinder to your fellow critters. Share some of that food, if you’re that concerned about it being too much. and let it the fuck GO already.

you know; if things keep going the way they’re being predicted to by some of our direr and dourer voices, over the next o i don’t know, half- century or so? i have a feeling that the whole “thin is in!” bit will, at least, no longer be something people have to fret about. on account of, if famine and so forth become “in” in this our supposed “First World,” why, I predict a remarkable turnaround in whatever’s left of the fashion industry: fat is attractive and HEALTHY! hey, imagine that: enough to frigging eat in the damn first place!

Just a note in case it wasn’t clear — that “you” in that sentence does not refer to anybody in particular, other than that same amorphous “them” responsible for all those other cultural attitudes and assumptions [Insert something McLuhanesque here.]

My biggest reservation is the authors leave some of the most important data unshown. Dr. Bacon mentions the decrease weight factor (something which I agree with the authors of the paper on in regards for it potentially being confounding due to association of illness and weight loss, though that could be internally controlled for too if the study is good enough). However, they also leave unshown data from the total cohort that they say agrees with the data from those that gave their recalled weight at 50. That omission leaves me rather dubious, since if the total cohort provided consistent data they should have had no reason to use recalled data.

It is very obvious in their text that the data is being built by the conclusion, instead of the conclusion being built by the data. Bad science.

Give us a couple of generations to try living normally before you condemn us as abnormal or doomed.

[sarcasm]Sorry. No can do. Why, don’t you understand how painful it is for us to look at you ? [/sarcasm]

Beyond the “paper bag” issue, there’s also the fact that as these sort of bullshit articles get more and more media play, any possible valid distinction between being “overweight” and “obese” disappears more and more. Extreme notions of what’s right and what’s wrong tend to drive out attempts at moderate opinion.

[sarcasm]The great thing about all those crash diets and stomach-stapling surgeries is that they make it much easier for fat women on a budget to buy clothes.[/sarcasm] I went looking for some office-appropriate wear on ebay last year. After awhile, I lost track of how many sellers went to the trouble of explaining that they (or their daughter, mom, friend) had had “the surgery” and now didn’t need the fat clothes anymore. I wonder what compells people to share that information with a total stranger at an online auction house. [sarcasm]I have to get started on my thank you note to the diet industry now. My new used office wear looks great.[/sarcasm]

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And, we’d need at least a couple of generations to know what the normal sizes and weights of human beings are when freed from the bizarre impact of weight loss attempts. Many human beings in a world without weight loss attempts would likely still fall in the “obese” catagory simply as their normal body size, even if the numbers of “obese” people would fall with the removal of weight loss attempts from the culture. And, since the “obese” are also the people most directly harmed by weight loss attempts and all the accompanying hatred and lack of access to opportunity and services, we have no confirmation that being genetically “obese” is somehow abnormal or intrinsically undesireable or life threatening. We gain weight more easily than anyone else, and we’ve been hounded and nagged and threatened into doing precisely those things that cause weight gain; it’s a wonder there are any “obese” people in this culture still left alive at all. Give us a couple of generations to try living normally before you condemn us as abnormal or doomed.

The situation for the “obese” is the same as for the “overweight” or anyone else. We’re human beings, equally as valuable as anyone else. We have the right to respect, equal access, and absolute autonomy in medical decisions. Let’s not make the mistake of creating a new “paper bag society,” where the people who are fat, but not too fat, are seen as somehow better or more normal or better for society than the fattest people.