2.) There is no superior dieting strategy. They all work and they all result in weight loss that quickly returns.

3.) Moderately fat people have little decrease in longevity but do have added health problems resulting from increased type 2 diabetes, and musculoskeletal injury and deterioration.

4.) It is not proven that fat people who exercise are healthier. They probably feel better.

5.) The reason fat people are living longer now is not known. It may be due to control of hypertension, which is very prominent in the obese.

6.) There is no proven etiology for the increase in obesity in America .

7.) The longevity of Americans is continually increasing.

I read the Campos interview which contains who knows how many distortions.
For instance –Campos : “Now lets talk about excess health care costs. If you look at the study, nearly half of the excess health care costs associated with being fat are from higher rates of drug prescription. But why are fat people being prescribed more drugs than thin ones? Largely, because they have the “disease” of being fat, which is then treated directly and indirectly by prescription drugs!

For instance, statins. Statins are a multi-billion dollar business, but there’s very little statistical evidence that they benefit the vast majority of people to whom they’re prescribed.—- “

This is entirely erroneous and typical of his shoot from the hip style. Statins are never prescribed for uncomplicated obesity, but for the secondary effects of obesity such as high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. The jury is out on statins for people without symptoms, but diabetics are very high risk for heart attacks. He is right that the treatment is costly but he wrongly concludes that it is not needed. Old fashioned diet pills aren’t recommended anymore and cost practically nothing if they were used.

The body is quite mechanistic actually. Yes your body will scale down the metabolism when you diet (it thinks you are starving and initiates a survival response). But it is quite predictable and understandable. I am not denying it is may be a hard problem, but a scientific one it certainly is.

You’re right that heavy weight training also makes you hungry. But if you’re eating enough protein and fat while doing it, most people mostly gain muscle. And while it is possible to have a lot of muscle yet appear outwardly obese (sumo wrestlers, offensive linemen, etc.) those body types are outliers. More muscle typically requires more calories, so you can eat as much as you always did, while still losing fat.

Doing either only cardio or only weight training consume calories. But it does take a lot of willpower not to simply replace those calories by eating more when you’re doing cardio. Whereas with weight training typically as you gain muscle you lose fat. So you might end up staying at the same weight, but body fat percentage goes down.

Recently, there was news about a study that showed a significant correlation between higher BMI and longer lifespan. But BMI is a terrible metric for evaluating health, because it doesn’t distinguish lean muscle from fat. So there is a good chance that the results were confounded by people with high BMI, low body fat percentage.

In my amateur experience, if calories in are less than calories out you will probably lose fat. But it takes a lot less willpower to do it with weight training mixed with cardio, than cardio alone. If more people knew this (especially women!), I think that more obese people would get better results and not quit out of frustration.

By the way, if anyone is interested, Crossfit is a very effective program that combines high-intensity cardio with weight training. I’ve seen a lot of people have great outcomes while doing it. It does take a bit of dedication, but mostly you don’t have to worry too much about what you’re eating as long as you’re getting enough protein.

“exercise doesn’t make you thin, it makes you hungry”

Just reading that statement, I can expand it to:

“While exercise burns calories, it also makes you hungry, which causes you to eat more, replacing calories lost from exercise. The net effect is no weight loss.”

He’s not denying that exercise burns calories. He’s really not saying anything at all about the mathematics of calories in/calories out. He’s saying that once we include the effect on hunger, the net effect is no weight loss. He’s pointing out that while people in principle can lose weight by exercising more and eating less, in reality this is not what they end up doing, because of the factor of hunger.

Furthermore, to give it an honest the statement must be read as implicitly softened and qualified, in obvious ways. Almost any statement of this sort is intended as a general rule, valid in the majority of cases but not necessarily all, and furthermore restricted in scope to the population being discussed. It’s just the nature of the subject. So here’s how I think it is implicitly softened and restricted:

“The mild sort of exercise that overweight people typically do who are trying to lose weight burns more calories but, because it also makes them hungry which makes them eat more, ultimately has no net effect on their weight in the great majority of cases.”

He can’t rightly be interpreted as saying anything more.

So, Olympic level and military training programs are implicitly excluded from the statement, since he is talking about typical overweight people who are trying to lose weight. If you think that military experience must be included I can supply an argument explaining what is different about it (e.g. the people who enter it are selected, the program is, once the person is enlisted, coercive, there is a third party trainer involved whom the typical overweight person trying to lose weight does not have, etc.). But my point here is that the statement needs to be understood.

does an adolescent girl change her diet to gain those fat deposits (ie breasts)? no. her hormones store the fat. diet and exercise do not drive this process.

the idea that cardio suppresses appetite is ludicrous. is it for the short term?