“Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

I think this is where 100% body positivity falls short, and that is context.

Being a bigger person doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't mean that you are weak, or even mean that you are unhealthy on its own. As a random person, a friend, whatever we should not pass judgment on other people in that regard.

But on the flip side context is incredibly important. For example in a doctor setting. It is deeply concerning that I see a ton of people that immediately think that if their doctor mentions needing to loose weight that they are immediately fat phobic.

I see people saying they want a "body positive" doctor. Sure Doctor's need to be better and understand that everyone's body, diet, etc is different. But I am concerned about this desire to have a doctor never talk about your weight.

I am overweight and my doctor mentions it... I mean we are tracking it and they weight me. Him not saying anything would be wrong and him not doing his job.

But you are very right that you can't shame someone even at the Doctor. But you also can't ignore it.

> That person (not statistic) needs to see themselves as healthy and loved to have a chance at being healthy.

I don't buy it. Tolerance towards fatness has risen since the 80s, as have weights; both have gone up at the same time. The more tolerance our society has for fatness, the fatter people get. If more tolerance for fat people were the key to getting people to lose weight then there should be an inverse relationship between the two, but that just hasn't happened.

> BMI

You don't need to look at BMI, or any number besides fat % for that matter, to see we have a massive fucking issue. If your belly protrudes far enough that you can't see your own feet, big boned or not, you're obese

Obesity is BMI 30+, unless you're a semi-pro/pro athlete or have genetic defects at 30+ BMI you're definitely fat af, here are examples of 30 BMI: https://www.lipedema.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Obesity-...

There is absolutely no chance you have a 30+ BMI because of "big bones"

I think there are several reasons:

1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today.

2. Massive amounts of money involved in telling people to eat/drink more, and then spend more money in gyms and taking pills to lose that weight. As opposed to just eating less and then living normal healthy active lives. There’s not much money in the latter.

3. People wanting to stop fat-shaming (which is also unequivocally bad…fat shaming only makes it harder for people to lose weight), trying to convince other people that someone being fat does not make them bad, quickly morphing into being fat is good.

You've missed the point of BMI. It's a population metric. The application of it to the individual really only works in the edges (too skinny, too fat) where it becomes obvious. I've never seen a BMI confidence interval (doctors are bad at statistics) but I would imagine the 95% CI would reveal the exact thing you stated. I am an example of this as well. By DEXA I measure at ~19% bodyfat yet my BMI is 27.6. However, it has never been a problem of misdiagnosis and a doctor has never been compelled to bring up my weight.

This argument you're presenting is used by the "fat positivity" movement to discourage the use of population measures that ARE effective in creating useful statistical analysis of health risks. Like all animals humans are subject to the laws of physics. When you have more mass per unit height your body has to work harder. If you then go on and continue to add or maintain this mass you develop health problems. You don't need an MD to see the intention of the metric nor the absurdity of promoting fatness as a "positive" trait. The only thing this reveals is that the progressives have gaslighted society into believing a lie by using "science" as a kudgel to beat you into compliance with.