What is your evidence that losing fat is very good for people?
I may have inverted the whole cause-effect thing—after all, I did just admit that doing better in your life makes it much easier to lose fat. So it’s entirely plausible that doing better means that you simultaneously lose fat and do other things that make your life better/healthier.
Overall, body fat isn’t the node you want to target anyways, but rather the vague overall level of healthiness and life satisfaction. I believe there’s influence going both ways—that is, losing fat helps many people live healthier and more fulfilled lives, and that having a healthy and emotionally fulfilling life makes it easier to lose fat. I don’t know enough to make an analysis of the relative merits of telling people how to change eating habits X, Y, and Z, as compared to teaching them strategies to deal with their emotions and interpersonal relationships in a healthy way. I do know that they’re both vaguely good ideas with obvious benefits and opportunity costs, and definitely better than meandering along the same kind of strategies that lead them to want to make changes in their life in the first place.
I may have inverted the whole cause-effect thing—after all, I did just admit that doing better in your life makes it much easier to lose fat. So it’s entirely plausible that doing better means that you simultaneously lose fat and do other things that make your life better/healthier.
Overall, body fat isn’t the node you want to target anyways, but rather the vague overall level of healthiness and life satisfaction. I believe there’s influence going both ways—that is, losing fat helps many people live healthier and more fulfilled lives, and that having a healthy and emotionally fulfilling life makes it easier to lose fat. I don’t know enough to make an analysis of the relative merits of telling people how to change eating habits X, Y, and Z, as compared to teaching them strategies to deal with their emotions and interpersonal relationships in a healthy way. I do know that they’re both vaguely good ideas with obvious benefits and opportunity costs, and definitely better than meandering along the same kind of strategies that lead them to want to make changes in their life in the first place.