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There is 1 comment on Obesity’s Link to Mortality Understated in Prior Research

  1. We know two things about the subjects in your study: 1) They were once fat (the term I prefer to “obese”) and 2) They have lost weight. Did you examine the possibility that it is the fact that they lost weight which affects their outcomes negatively? Or maybe how they lost weight?

    So many people have gotten caught up in society’s obsession with thinness and gone on and off diets, while their weights yo-yo’ed. How many of the former fat people you studied were at the lower end of one loop of a lifetime of yo-yo’ing when they became ill? Others have dieted their way down from being fat and kept themselves thin through restriction and obsession, both causes of stress. How many of your subjects fit that profile?

    In other words, how did your study control for the way they lost the weight, and did you even consider that it was not their history of being fat but the history of losing weight which is the important consideration?

    Thank you.

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