I was a bit curious if anyone here had seen this study and their thoughts on it. The results of it seem questionable to me. Although I do agree with him that the BMI is bull.
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2023/02/23/excess-weight-obesity-more-deadly-previously-believed
Firstly health doesn't equal worth or morals, always worth saying that.
On a quick review I can't say that he's taken into the account the damage of yo yo dieting. Those who are naturally lower BMI have no reason to put their bodies through the damage of a diet over and over whereas higher BMI people are harassed into.
I can't access the whole original paper, however "The statistical analysis of nearly 18,000 people also shines a light on the pitfalls of using body mass index (BMI) to study health outcomes," 18,000? Where are these people from? what's their diet history? did the higher BMI people have surgeries for weight loss?
"Masters mined the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1988 to 2015, looking at data from 17,784 people, including 4,468 deaths.
He discovered that a full 20% of the sample characterized as “healthy” weight had been in the overweight or obese category in the decade prior. When set apart, this group had a substantially worse health profile than those in the category whose weight had been stable. "
Weight loss does damage to your body??? Also "decade prior" how did these people lose weight because 10 years is ASTOUNDING to not have regained weight. Unless of course they were permanently on their diet which is, again, DAMAGING.
"Meanwhile, 37% of those characterized as overweight and 60% of those with obese BMI had been at lower BMIs in the decade prior. Notably, those who had only recently gained weight had better health profiles." The idea that people have natural ideal weights kind of leads to this. Your weight will fluctuate as you age and if your ideal weight goes up then its healthiest at that weight.
"Contrary to previous research, the study found no significant mortality risk increases for the “underweight” category." My first thought is does this include people who qualify for a DSM 5 diagnosis for anorexia? (This means they have weight loss, yes weight loss is required by the book don't get me started) 1 in 100 girls are estimated to struggle with anorexia alone. Are these people removed from the underweight category because they recently lost weight ??? How does that make sense! DIETING CAUSES DAMAGE, EATING DISORDERS CAUSE DAMAGE.
So my impression of this is its great at further proving BMI is crap at health but unless you account for the damage dieting does to a body you cannot say these statistics exist in a vaccum. It's astounding that in 2024 we are still accepting half the picture of weight analysis and statistics. Fat bodies don't just exist, we get pressured to do damaging and terrifying things to our body, we get our health ignored for weight first treatment.
Is our health really that bad or are there these other factors preventing equality in care?
Like in Sweden they left obese patients to die during COVID. Or having treatment stop over weight gain fears.
Or the time they decided polluting water because fat people drink it was okay.
So I guess my tldr is, this isn't saying what people might think it's saying. At least not as presented in this article. This really just proves weight loss is bad imo.
