> There are many obese people who are extremely healthy
I don't believe that's true. There are some cases (like powerlifters) who can be at an obese BMI but still have strong cardiovascular fitness, but unless you are in that narrow category, if you are obese you do not have strong aerobic fitness. 'Decent physical condition' alone belies that you are not 'extremely' healthy. Decently healthy maybe, but certainly not extremely. Even if you are still metabolically healthy, you are at increased risk for adverse long-term outcomes (source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24297192/). That is more than just a psychological issue, no matter how much you try to handwave it away.
Your belief in a fact is unnecessary. The issue with these studies is they don’t control for lifestyle and diet. The notion that you can not be fat while eating a high quality low calorie diet and exercising is simply false. A valuable study in this space would be measuring the impact of diet and exercise on health outcomes while holding BMI constant, then comparing across stripes.
In studies where diet and lifestyle are controlled for, metabolically health overweight are not at greater risk.
The issue is we are pointing to fatness and not diet and exercise. It’s causing people to seek ways to get thin assuming it’ll help. But some people are thin no matter what they do, some are fat. However there’s a correlation between poor lifestyle choices and being fat and good life style choices and being thin. This skews uncontrolled studies towards fat is bad even with good metabolic health, because having a good metabolic health but maintaining it with poor inputs will have a long term bad outcome.
In one of the reference below, the conclusion is:
(i) Higher fitness should be considered a characteristic of metabolically healthy but obese phenotype. (ii) Once fitness is accounted for, the metabolically healthy but obese phenotype is a benign condition, with a better prognosis for mortality and morbidity than metabolically abnormal obese individuals.
> The notion that you can not be fat while eating a high quality low calorie diet and exercising is simply false
You actually believe this shit? If you eat a calorie deficit, you will lose weight, full stop. 'High quality low calorie diet' is gobbledygook to make you feel better. You can eat absolute shit and lose weight if you eat appropriate portions. Or do you not believe in the conservation of energy?
> metabolically healthy but obese phenotype is a benign condition, with a better prognosis for mortality and morbidity than metabolically abnormal obese individuals
so, if you compare yourself only to obese people, you're healthier if you're metabolically healthy. And that is some kind of interesting scientific conclusion? Is this a study done exclusively by fat people to make themselves feel better?
I don't believe that's true. There are some cases (like powerlifters) who can be at an obese BMI but still have strong cardiovascular fitness, but unless you are in that narrow category, if you are obese you do not have strong aerobic fitness. 'Decent physical condition' alone belies that you are not 'extremely' healthy. Decently healthy maybe, but certainly not extremely. Even if you are still metabolically healthy, you are at increased risk for adverse long-term outcomes (source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24297192/). That is more than just a psychological issue, no matter how much you try to handwave it away.