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There are hundreds of studies indicating that each marginal additional unit of bodyfat is less healthy for you than not having it.

You are quoting poorly done and controlled BMI studies to dispute this, studies which look primarily at elderly people where weight is highly correlated with health to begin with and is not properly controlled for along every axis.

I'm not here to litigate it or convince you though.

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"Less healthy" is distinct from "shortens lifespan" which was pretty much the entire point I was making.

I understand that the idea that there are well-controlled massive studies with enough power to detect differences from weight alone is appealing, but they simply aren't there -- which should tell you that even if the effect exists, it's not strong enough that it should be your primary motivation to lose weight. There are already plenty of reasons to lose weight that don't require lying to people about having a BMI > 20 shortening your lifespan.

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