Sondra, thanks for the constructive response!

The original article states:

you can be fat and be healthy. ... you [the reader] have seen medical studies that say otherwise .... but the data is still nebulous.

No the data is not nebulous. Body fat, visceral body fat especially is deadly. The majority of Americans have notably shortened life expectancy as compared to the life expectancy they would have if they had in ideal body fat level.

Now there ARE many factors besides weight which are also very important for life expectancy, so you certainly can be skinny and very unhealthy, but that does not make body fat healthy.

AND there were many other ideas in this article. Like doctors not trying to treat other issues for the obese, and the massive difficulty of reducing ones weight. Those are all valid observations, but they don't make up for making a false claim.

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The article you cite is a great one for discussion. The problem with journalists is that they are paid according to number of readers, so they are incentivized to say controversial things.... saying the same old stuff just doesn't pay.

This author is definitely spinning the story in a weight positive way, but the studies she is citing don't show that body fat is not a negative factor. The first one talks about the fact that BMI might not be a good measure of body fat. Agreed. So Serena williams has a huge BMI and is not at increase risk, SINCE SHE HAS LOTS OF MUSCLES NOT FAT.

The study reference by your article does not say body fat is healthy. It says BMI is a bad measure.

https://journals.lww.com/nutritiontodayonline/fulltext/2015/05000/body_mass_index__obesity,_bmi,_and_health__a.5.aspx

Now the article makes many other good points, like doctors ignoring your other issues because of body fat. The idea that many people are not in a good position to loose that fat. Indeed our bodies are engineered to NOT loose that fat.

Still none of this can be construed into some refutation of a very important finding:

All other things being equal, having elevated levels of body fat is strongly tied to many negative health outcomes. PERIOD. We should not dance around this point.

I know of many strong studies that show this effect. If you know of studies that show it does not link to mortality I would be interested. But I believe this is settled science.

We can have many ideas about how we deal with this situation... I just don't think we should be denying the basic scientific findings. There is enough confusion out there already.

p.s. I have (as of now mild) health consequences that are made worse by carrying extra weight. And my BMI is high... not terribly so, but far enough that I am very serious about bringing it down.... and I am so far not really succeeding! So none of this is a theoretical concern for me. It is very real.