People likely overstate how dangerous being overweight and even to some extent obesity is. Excess weight usually comes with a whole raft of comorbidities, many

People likely overstate how dangerous being overweight and even to some extent obesity is. Excess weight usually comes with a whole raft of comorbidities, many of which can't be accounted for and which can play the actual causal role in bad health outcomes. I'll take my actuarial chances on a fat person who has good mental health, has a rich social circle, regularly exercises, and eats "healthy" (however you define it) foods any day over a depressive skinny person who sits on their couch all day eating potato chips. That said, many interventions for the obese would help all of those other things, even if hypothetically you could vary them independently. And those comorbidities are often the things making those anti-obesity interventions so ineffective. Muscle wise, lifting weights and eating a surplus is usually good enough to see significant gains for an untrained individual. There are "hard gainers," but their issue is having difficulty eating enough; that's not an issue for people who are overweight.