Thanks. I was trained in health not economics. Edited the article accordingly.

Every study I have seen concludes that weight loss interventions are worth while, so I am contradicting these studies. However scrutinising these studies makes one feel that there was a pre-determined conclusion. The cost of weight loss seemed ligitimate in the study I used, (except that they didn’t account for drop outs,) but then they assume that the weight loss is permanent. They also use QALY’s to cost ratio to assess whether their program was worth it. In the book Effective Altruism the estimated loss of QALY’s for obesity is very low. But this is somewhat subjective and open to exaggeration. Other studies claim benefits from a program that costs $10 per person, which I am skeptical of. Often they count loss of productivity as an expense of obesity because obese people have more sick days. However studies show that weight satisfaction is better at predicting sick days than BMI so fat people who are satisfied with the weight don’t take extra sick days. So literally they are getting the cost of worrying about weight and using it as a reason why we should worry about weight.