You could just try "Everyone is different and there are no hard and fast rules"

I am 52 years old and both my parents are still living. My mother is 80, overweight, sedentary, a long-term lung cancer survivor, and is still smoking. Yes, she has COPD, but her heart is fine, her blood pressure is fine, and if it weren't for the cigarettes she would probably live to be 100. My father is 82, overweight, and doesn't get much if any exercise. He just had a physical and the doctor said everything is fine. My father-in-law was EXTREMELY obese, also smoked, and he made it to 79, which is not a terribly long life in my book, but for someone with the Media Medical Double Whammy™ isn't too shabby.

(Sorry, guys, about the revelations, but I need them to prove a point.)

Jim Fixx, who popularized running among the general population, took up running at the age of 35, lost 60 pounds, quit smoking, and died of a massive heart attack at the age of 52. He had three arteries that were at least 50% blocked. Turns out he came from a family with bad heart history, with a father whose first heart attack was at 35 and the second, fatal one at 42. So much for the "magic bullet" of how to ensure long life. Yes, Fixx' lifestyle changes possibly added ten years to his life. But they weren't a magic bullet.

Science continues to scratch its collective head about said magic bullet -- a sure-fire way to live a long and healthy life. Every paper, every piece of advice that comes out of the scientific community, continues to insist that weight loss is that magic bullet, no matter how confounding the so-called "evidence" might be:

About two years ago, a group of federal researchers reported that overweight people have a lower death rate than people who are normal weight, underweight or obese. Now, investigating further, they found out which diseases are more likely to lead to death in each weight group.

Linking, for the first time, causes of death to specific weights, they report that overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.

As a consequence, the group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reports, there were more than 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, than would have expected if those people had been of normal weight.

Their paper is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers also confirmed that obese people and people whose weights are below normal have higher death rates than people of normal weight. But, when they asked why, they found that the reasons were different for the different weight categories.

Some who studied the relation between weight and health said the nation might want to reconsider what are ideal weights.

“If we use the criteria of mortality, then the term ‘overweight’ is a misnomer,” said Daniel McGee, professor of statistics at Florida State University.

“I believe the data,” said Dr. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego. A body mass index of 25 to 30, the so-called overweight range, “may be optimal,” she said.

Others said there were plenty of reasons that being overweight was not desirable.

“Health extends far beyond mortality rates,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Manson added that other studies, including ones at Harvard, found that being obese or overweight increased a person’s risk for any of a number of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and several forms of cancer. And, she added, excess weight makes it more difficult to move about and impairs the quality of life.

“That’s the big picture in terms of health outcomes,” Dr. Manson said. “That’s what the public needs to look at.”

Is that all ya got? "It's more difficult to get around?" Ask Melina if I had trouble getting around the cavernous McCormick Place convention center at Yearly Kos, even with with a bigass backpack holding a bigass laptop adding at least 20 pounds to the load.

It would be fun watching these so-called "experts" jump through hoops trying to justify the continuation of a diet industry that essentially peddles snake oil if it weren't for the fact that these are very real people being sold what is often utter horseshit by their own doctors, based on "evidence" that is loaded with prejudgments, sloppy scientific methodology, and often based on emotion rather than common sense. I've written here about my gynecologist, who was wonderfully cool about weight, with a viewpoint that as long as you're healthy, your blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are good, you're fine -- until her 30th high school reunion was approaching and then a fad crash diet became what she advocated for all her overweight patients. I won't be able to tell you if she gains back all of the 40 pounds she lost in two months because I'm not going back to her.

I've never been an athlete, and I have no interest in participating in sports. I walk, I bike, and I do yoga. I have no trouble with my feet, my knees are fine, and occasional lower-back stiffness in the morning seems to be addressed very nicely by light stretching in the morning. I am, after all, 52. I walk faster than most thin people I know, mostly because of a lifetime of taking two steps to most people's one. I don't gorge on chocolate, I've all but banished cookies (my own personal uncontrollable food) from my life except for an occasional treat, I've made changes in the amount I eat to accommodate my slowing metabolism. I eat lean meats, reduced-fat cheeses, and lots of fruits and vegetables. I read labels and avoid high fructose corn syrup and white flour products, and when I do have bread or pasta, it is of the whole grain variety. If I go out for dinner, I take half of it home. I suspect I'm not much different from many overweight people, especially when I go over to Kate's blog and read the comments there.

At least there are some doctors like Dr. Mitchell Gail, who published the paper cited in the above article, and has not lost his common sense in the face of some need in the medical community to find a one-size-fits-all approach:

“If you are in the pink and feeling well and getting a good amount of exercise and if your doctor is very happy with your lab values and other test results, then I am not sure there is any urgency to change your weight.”