I know that movies made from true stories are not the same as documentaries …

The New Neo Posted on by

… but it has long annoyed me when such movies play fast and loose with the truth, especially when the additions are not improvements – which is often the case.

Last night I watched a movie based on a Holocaust memoir I’d read, and I’d also seen the author’s interview with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. That’s really why I watched the 2011 movie In Darkness in the first place, because it’s based on that family’s experience hiding in the sewer system of Lvov for over a year.

Krystyna Chiger (later Keren) was only a young child when her family was forced into the Lvov ghetto, and then when the ghetto was liquidated they hid in Lvov’s sewer system where they remained for fourteen months. That’s the story the movie purports to tell, the same story in her book The Girl In the Green Sweater.

But it’s not the same story, although it sticks to the general outlines. Although the movie was one of the Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film (it’s a joint Polish/German/Canadian effort), and also received a whole bunch of awards from European groups, IMHO it’s only about one-tenth the film it could have been, using the same source material. And that left me in a state of frustration at many moments while watching it, yelling at the screen things like, “That didn’t happen!” and “What about [fill in the blank]?”

The writers saw fit to add a bunch of exceptionally dramatic – sometimes cheesy and cliched – scenes that didn’t happen, and left out or minimized many of the most dramatic true events that did happen. They also threw in a host of completely gratuitous sex scenes that added nothing but more cliches.

Just to take one of many examples where the movie played down scenes when the truth would have been far more suspenseful and cinematic, we have the way the Jews managed to get fresh water every day. According to Krystyna’s book, there was a broken pipe that dripped fresh water, but it was several kilometers away from their hiding place and could only be reached by her father (or another of the men) crawling through a narrow pipe, carrying the kettle that would hold the water in his teeth the whole way. Now, we don’t need to see the entire trek, which must have taken a long time. But in the only scene in the movie that refers to the process, we see someone (is he walking or crawling? The scene is so fleeting I don’t remember) for a couple of seconds going to get the water, and to the best of my recollection he was carrying the receptacle in his hands.

That’s it for the water. No drama at all. Why oh why? And this is just one of many instances like this, including the film’s climactic scene – which I won’t describe, in case you want to watch it.

Instead, we have the repetitive sex scenes, and a few made-up action scenes as well as the action scenes that really did happen. The film also skips the main motive of the Polish Catholic man who is most instrumental in helping them – which is that he’s led a fairly dissolute life, wants to go straight, and believes that helping the Jews will save his soul. It’s an exceptionally moving fact – at least, I think so – but the movie leaves it out entirely or in one brief sentence makes a sort of oblique joke out of it.

The title In Darkness makes sense; the sewers were very dark indeed, so dark that when the survivors emerged after fourteen months, their vision was temporarily affected (although the movie shows their vision as blurred when in fact they saw things shifted to red, as though through a red filter). But it makes for a mostly dark movie, and even the scenes shot outside the sewers – and there are quite a few – are somewhat monochrome.

But there would have been a simple remedy for that. Leave out some of the hokey action scenes and the sex scenes, and give us some of the people’s previous life before the Nazis. Introduce them to us as they were before the war, and let us get to know them before they become nearly-indistinguishable from each other in the dark of the sewers. The contrast – which we learn from Krystyna’s book and her interview – was stark, and would have made good cinema. But we get none of that. We first meet these people when they’re about to escape the ghetto and go down to the sewers, and I (who knew pretty much who the actors were supposed to be) still spent at least the first half hour trying to figure out their identities.

Speaking of the characters’ missing backstories, in the film the little girl who plays Krystyna wears the green sweater of the book’s title throughout the film. But it has no significance for us; we never learn that the sweater was knitted by her grandmother. Here’s the actual story, not a bit of which is told in the movie:

The green sweater, which her paternal grandmother knit before the German invasion of Poland, was a treasured object. Two years before, Kristine had watched that beloved grandmother being loaded onto a truck and deported, likely to the nearbyBelzec death camp. When her grandmother had waved goodbye, a Nazi guard had bashed her head with the butt of a rifle.

The sweater was a precious link to prewar love for the child, from a grandparent who’d been cruelly ripped away, and the garment is now in the Holocaust Museum in DC.

And then there was the time element, which is practically ignored in the movie. The movie only discloses at the very end of the film, in titles, that the length of their sewer stay was fourteen months. Why couldn’t the viewers have known that while watching the movie, with some sort of periodic time stamps now and then to let us know how long this was taking? Instead, we have no idea, and it could just as well have been fourteen days or fourteen weeks as fourteen months.

Now that I’ve said all this, I bet it’s not a bad movie if you don’t know the story in advance. But I suggest this video in which the beauteous Krystyna (now Kristine) tells the story, or her book to which I’ve linked above. And yes, she seems to still be alive now, at around ninety years of age. A strong constitution, I guess. The video interview is from 1998, when she was 63 (and as usual, I suggest that if she speaks too slowly for you, you can watch at faster speed by adjusting the settings). It’s long but I think it’s very rewarding:

Giving up on Gaza peace

The New Neo Posted on by

I see a great deal of current commentary saying that things will never work out in Gaza, that Trump and Netanyahu were foolish to think it would, and that it’s all over there and Hamas has won.

It’s been what – two and a half weeks? – since the deal was announced and the hostages came home, and the Gazans aren’t singing Kumbaya? I would wager that neither Trump nor Netanyahu are surprised by this.

This is what I wrote not long after the hostages came home:

The problem is deeper than these people [the terrorists that were released by Israel in exchange] – much deeper. And any more permanent solution will have to be more comprehensive.

That’s what the larger Plan is all about. You can hear people saying it’s a trap and now Israel has snatched defeat from victory, and you can hear people say it has great promise. I submit that no one knows at this point and so I think that sort of talk is a waste of time. As events play out it will become more clear. Will that take a month, a year, two years, or a decade? I certainly don’t know that, either. But let’s give it a chance. Do we have any choice?

Trump is a hero today, especially in Israel. You can read about that here. He seems to think the war is over, or at least he thinks it’s a good idea right now to accentuate the positive. But he’s a practical man, and knows that it may be necessary to resume military operations at any time.

Israel knows it, too. But today’s a day to celebrate.

Well, that day of celebration is in the past, although the recent past. And the hostages are still home, which means the focus is no longer on them and on making sure they don’t get killed by Israel as Israel battles Hamas.

But for anyone who thought that Hamas wouldn’t violate the ceasefire – well, I want to try to sell them that proverbial bridge. Anyone who thought this would go smoothly – same thing. It seems pretty clear to me that the rest of the Plan will be extraordinarily difficult and will take a very long time even if ultimately successful.

Will the other countries that pledged to help actually help? I very very much wonder. But I repeat that I don’t think either Trump or Netanyahu are naive about this, and I think we don’t know the half of what’s happening and what will happen with these countries behind closed doors.

And I also think that engineering the hostages’ return – getting that done initially rather than later – was one of the main points of the deal. Israel needed a rest, even if it’s a short one. It’s a tiny country that’s been on a war footing for two long years. The “ceasefire” – any ceasefire in the area – should always have scare quotes around it, for the foreseeable future.

After October 7, 2023 – never such innocence again.

As New York goes, so goes Minneapolis

The New Neo Posted on by

Or is it the other way around?

I’ve never thought to compare those two places before, although they’re both cities. Climate, demographics, location, history, style – all are very very different. But in terms of mayoral races, they sound surprisingly similar, as Bill Glahn points out:

Minneapolis voters (who are 80-90% Democrats) face a Hobson’s choice next month at the ballot box. They could opt for the gradual (though accelerating) decline offered by two-term incumbent Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey. Or they could take the offer of a quick coup de grâce from sitting state Sen. Omar Fateh, another Democrat. …

For reasons I am unable to fathom, the city’s newspaper, The Star Tribune, is out today with its umpteenth puff piece on the youngish (age 35) state senator. …

Reporter Deena Winter writes,

“Over the past five years, the democratic socialist has gone from political unknown to standard bearer for Minneapolis’ ascendant progressive coalition, harnessing disaffection with more moderate Democrats — and with the political process itself — to rack up a series of electoral and legislative wins.”

In his thirties? Check. Democratic socialist? Check. Previously unknown? Check. Suddenly winning? Check. Third-world connections? Check (Fateh is of Somali ethnicity). Muslim? Check.

Fateh has more allegations of fraud than Mamdani, but their policies certainly sound similar:

Fateh says that he will fight Donald Trump on immigration enforcement. On housing, Fateh will begin with rent control and transition to the abolition of private property.

On policing, there will be none. …

He vows to raise many taxes (local income tax, carbon fees, vacancy tax, a “land-value” tax). But the problem here is that you have to tax something, some object (property value, sales, income, wealth, people), of which there soon will be nothing. …

… [O]nce Fateh takes office, the existing cash in the city’s treasury will soon vanish through fraud and scams. His ability to raise new revenue will be stymied by a lack of anything taxable to latch onto. He will then be left pleading for a county/state/federal bailout.

Come to think of it, he sounds even worse than Mamdani, due to possibly more corruption and fraud (see this for allegations against Fateh of voting fraud in initially winning the Democrat nomination for mayor, which was later withdrawn).

And Fateh’s opponent Frey – who was mayor during the Floyd riots and COVID – is not all that dissimilar to Cuomo, although a bit more energetic and considerably younger (44).

Frey is the current mayor of Minneapolis, running for a third term. He’s also Jewish, which makes for a stark contrast with Fateh (Frey also reminds me a bit of Chicago’s ex-mayor, Rham Emanuel, in that not only are they both Jewish but they both have – of all things – a ballet background; Emanuel as a dancer himself and Frey being the child of two professional ballet dancers).

There is no Sliwa figure in Minneapolis, but there are many candidates and the race will be decided by ranked-choice voting. And so we have this situation:

Looking to the 2025 Minneapolis mayoral race, Minnesota Sen. Omar Fateh, Rev. DeWayne Davis and Jazz Hampton have formed a pact to lobby for each other’s second- and third-place votes. Schultz says together they are using ranked-choice voting in an effort to block Mayor Jacob Frey from reelection.

So I think regular polls mean even less than usual there, because of this type of voting. But for what it’s worth, Frey leads in the most recent poll, but both candidates are way below 50% and the poll doesn’t seem to deal with the reality of the ranked-choice situation.

NOTE: Speaking of Mamdani, I watched this video by Ben Shapiro about the NYC race, and in it he said a fascinating thing: that a recent poll revealed that, among foreign-born New Yorkers, Mamdani leads Cuomo 62% to 24%, but among American-born New Yorkers, it’s 40% Cuomo, 32% Mamdani, and 25% Sliwa. It’s worth listening to his remarks on Mamdani in general, and the most recent debate in particular.

Are we seeing the start of an “Ozempic for all” movement?

The New Neo Posted on by

In yesterday’s post on the expansion of the definition of obesity to include 70% of Americans, I wrote:

Who’s celebrating? The makers of diet drugs and the purveyors of diet programs.

Well, today I saw this article:

The study, published in the Lancet journal and funded by Novo Nordisk, looked at data from 17,604 people aged 45 and over who were overweight and had cardiovascular disease, who were randomly assigned either weekly injections of semaglutide or placebo.

Previous analysis* of this data by the same international team found that semaglutide reduced heart attacks, strokes and other major cardiac events by 20% in this group.

In the new study, the team found that this reduction in major adverse events was similar regardless of participants’ weight at the start of the trial. That is, people only marginally classed as overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) of 27 (the average BMI for adults in the UK), saw similar benefits as those with obesity who had the highest BMIs.

The benefits were also largely independent of how much weight people lost in the first four and a half months of taking the drug. However, the researchers found a link between shrinking waistlines (the reduction in waist circumference) and heart benefits, with this accounting for a third of the drug’s protective effect on the heart after two years.

Google’s AI says “Novo Nordisk is a Danish pharmaceutical company that manufactures and distributes Ozempic, a prescription medication used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity … an injectable medication containing semaglutide …”

So this study is funded by the manufacturer of the drug. That doesn’t mean the finding is a lie, but it certainly means it should be looked on with caution.

Thing is, these weight-loss drugs also have major side effects. The known ones tend to be GI problems, but often serious enough to cause people to stop the drug even though quite motivated to take it. And even one of the study authors says:

This work has implications for how semaglutide is used in clinical practice. You don’t have to lose a lot of weight and you don’t need a high BMI to gain cardiovascular benefit. If your aim is to reduce cardiovascular disease, restricting its use to a limited time only and for those with the highest BMIs doesn’t make sense.

At the same time, the benefits need to be weighed against potential side effects. Investigations of side effects become especially important given the broad range of people this medicine and others like it could help.

We have no idea what the long-term side effects would be; these drugs are relatively new.

Trump is building a ballroom in the East Wing

The New Neo Posted on by

Impeach him, I say! Or perhaps sue him for something or other?

And yet now and then on the left there are surprising voices of reason on this, for example Shaun King on X:

I actually think it’s a great idea to build a big ballroom on the White House grounds.

It’s virtually impossible to hold events of any size there and they are always wasting millions on tents and heaters and chairs and lights and everything else.

Stop acting like you have some emotional attachment to the East Wing. You don’t.

Ah, but “acting like” when it’s politically expedient is one of the main tools of the left these days – and although it’s certainly not limited to the left, it is pretty much their stock in trade.

Although no, Obama wasn’t worse, at least not in terms of White House renovations.

Here’s a history of previous White House renovations. Some of them were before my time – actually, most of them were. But did anybody gave a rat’s patootie at the time?

NOTE: I do remember Jackie Kennedy’s renovations of White House decor, and the televised tour she gave. And I remember the intense shock I felt at the time, young though I was, on hearing her breathy almost Marilyn Monroe-ish voice. Here’s an article on her White House changes, and here’s a short clip from the tour:

George Abaraonye, of the Oxford Union, wants a word with you

The New Neo Posted on by

In the midst of all the shocking reactions from the left to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, there was this:

“Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f***ing go,” George Abaraonye, a 20-year-old Politics, Philosophy and Economics student and the incoming president of the Oxford Union, wrote in a WhatsApp group on Wednesday. On Instagram he added: “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.” …

The Union cannot immediately sack Abaraonye. According to its constitution, unless the president-elect resigns, 150 members need to sign a petition to demand a confidence vote. And Abaraonye was already a well-known, well-liked figure in Oxford. He ranked fifth in a recent “Big Names On Campus” list and is currently vice-president of the popular African and Caribbean Society. Friends describe him as “laid-back”.

Abaraonye only decided to run for president two days before the Union election. One ex-president described Abaraonye to me as a “joke candidate”. There was some controversy over his campaign tactics. A Union insider tells me a tribunal will be held to investigate the circumstances of election and whether there was any “electoral malpractice”. (At the Oxford Union, such scandals and investigations are common.) …

A lot of the attacks on Abaraonye have been explicitly racist. After the Daily Mail drew attention to his ABB A-Level results, below the usual 3As required, he has been called online a “worthless DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hire” who should be “deported”.

I don’t doubt many have been racist – I’ve seen some myself that are. But calling him a diversity hire is not racist. If his grades are in fact as reported, below the usual standards, he is most likely a DEI admission. But it’s my impression he is a native-born Brit.

He must have thought the sort of things he wrote about Kirk were just fine. What strikes me is how juvenile his words were in addition to being cruel. More or less at the level of sophistication of what you might expect from Garth and Wayne of “Wayne’s World.” Of course in line with his ultra-casual clothes at the Kirk debate, which were a statement as well.

From the Oxford Union a while back, on the subject:

In a statement posted on social media on Saturday, the union reiterated that it had already condemned the president-elect’s “inappropriate remarks”. The society added: “We emphasise that these are his personal views and not those of the Union, nor do they represent the values of our institution.

“At the same time, we are deeply disturbed by and strongly condemn the racial abuse and threats that George has faced in response. No individual should ever be attacked because of the colour of their skin or the community they come from. Threats to his life are abhorrent. Such rhetoric has no place online, or anywhere in society.”

Threats to his life are abhorrent, but he mocked Kirk’s shooting. It sounds as though whoever wrote the statement was far more concerned about the things said to Abaraonye than what Abaraonye himself said. But in the interests of clarity, I’ll add that Abaraonye’s remarks were written prior to the announcement of Kirk’s death. That does not excuse him in the least. It was apparent even from the first reports that the wound was extremely serious and might even be fatal. Nor would mocking even a wound such as Trump’s ear wound be okay. None of it is okay, and especially ironic given that this is a debating society.

To me, this is another indication of the domination of a gamer/twitter/cartoonish mentality in young people even in instutitions such as Oxford. To many of them, shooting is like something in a video game, to make a joke about in order to impress your peers who think it’s oh so funny to do so.

More of his “apology”:

On Thursday, Abaraonye said he had “reacted impulsively” to the news of Kirk’s shooting, and that the comments were “quickly deleted” after news emerged of his death.

“Those words did not reflect my values,” Abaraonye added. “Nobody deserves to be the victim of political violence … I extend my condolences to his family and loved ones.

“At the same time, my reaction was shaped by the context of Mr Kirk’s own rhetoric – words that often dismissed or mocked the suffering of others. He described the deaths of American children from school shootings as an acceptable ‘cost’ of protecting gun rights. He justified the killing of civilians in Gaza, including women and children, by blaming them collectively for Hamas. He called for the retraction of the Civil Rights Act, and repeatedly spread harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ and trans communities. These were horrific and dehumanising statements.”

Of course Abaronye’s words reflect his values. No one made him write them. His values are to mock someone who got shot while debating in the public square. He can try to walk it back but even that was done in a way that reveals his “values.” The “yes, but” type of thing, the mischaracterization of Kirk’s beliefs, is unfortunately typical of leftist discourse.

This was a warning note, one Abaronye did not heed:

It can also be revealed that 200 life members of the debating society – former Oxford University students who have paid to retain their membership – have expressed their willingness to support a vote of no confidence in Mr Abaraonye’s leadership.

This surpasses the 150 signatures required to bring no-confidence proceedings. …

The campaign to oust Mr Abaraonye is being organised by Allum Bokhari, an Oxford Union life member and managing director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, a US censorship watchdog.

Explaining his decision to rally Oxford Union life members to submit signatures, Mr Bokhari told The Telegraph: “The most final act of censorship is a bullet.

“Celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose only crime was talking to his ideological opponents, is completely antithetical to every moral and democratic principle the Oxford Union Society represents, not least free speech and the freedom to exchange ideas without the threat of violence.”

If you’re wondering – as I was – what’s the ethnic background of Bokhari, the surname is apparently Persian and the first name usually Muslim. Hail, Mr. Bokhari.

And it seems Bokhari got the last word, because more recently Abaronye himself called for the Oxford Union to have the vote. He seems to have thought he would win it:

This is a chance for us to stand against the racism of the far right, and to stand up for the principles the Union has championed for 200 years. Two centuries later, the same people who claim to believe in the Union are now acting in stark opposition to the Union’s founding principles, by supporting a campaign of harassment, censorship and abuse. We will not be silenced.

But he hadn’t counted on one particular element of the vote:

Abaraonye evidently believed that he could mobilise his supporters to win the no confidence vote, but he had not anticipated that it would be opened up to life members. The Spectator has reported that Abaraonye and his supporters then ‘moved a revenge motion of no confidence in the current president, Moosa Harraj, for allowing alumni to vote on Saturday’. Worse still, there have been allegations that the returning officer was subjected to intimidation and so the voting process was temporarily suspended.

In spite of these plot twists, the final result was conclusive. 1,228 voted in favour of the no confidence motion and 501 against (with 17 ballots spoilt). This met the required threshold of a two-thirds majority, and the motion has been carried. This amounts to an effective resignation by Abaraonye, but inevitably he is now contesting the result.

Abaraonye’s vile comments were especially ironic, of course, considering that this is a debating society, and Kirk dedicated his life to the belief that debate was the way for opponents to do battle rather than with actual literal weapons.

However, I think that if the voting had been limited to present members, it’s highly possible the results would have gone the other way.

Psaki and friends on Usha Vance – the left’s Handmaid’s Tale fantasies

The New Neo Posted on by

This is what I’m talking about:

“I think the little Manchurian candidate, JD Vance, wants to be president more than anything else,” Psaki claimed.

“I always wonder what is going on in the mind of his wife [Usha]. Are you okay? Please blink four times. Come over here, we’ll save you,” she imagined, making up some kind of weird scenario about her, seeming to imply she has something to fear. Do Democrats not understand what a happy marriage looks like?

“Little”? “Manchurian candidate”? This woman was once Biden’s press secretary, you may recall. So “Manchurian candidate” is certainly an odd appellation for her to use for J. D. Vance.

But it’s the idea of Usha as some sort of hostage that’s especially creepy. And it’s not an isolated thought. I heard it many times about Melania, from acquaintances of mine during Trump’s first term especially (see this). The idea is that these wives are being held hostage and live in fear, which is both repulsive and condescending. It’s as though they were taken by human traffickers – their husbands – and need to send a covert signal for rescue.

Rescue by the likes of Jen Psaki.

It’s somewhat of a Handmaid’s Tale fantasy, a book and movie that seem to take up a great deal of space in the minds of leftist women. It also reminds me of a very creepy film from 1965 – The Collector:

The Collector is a 1965 psychological horror film[4][5] directed by William Wyler, adapted by Stanley Mann and John Kohn from the 1963 novel by John Fowles. It stars Terence Stamp as a young man who abducts a beautiful art student, played by Samantha Eggar, holding her captive in the basement of his rural farmhouse.

I recall it as being pretty awful.

ADDENDUM:
And now I suddenly remember this:

NYC mayor’s poll tightens – if there were a 2-person race

The New Neo Posted on by

Only thing is – it almost certainly won’t be a 2-person race.

Here’s the poll:

The newly released report by Gotham Polling and the city AARP found that 44.6% of New Yorkers would vote for Mamdani if Sliwa quit the race, compared to 40.7% saying they’d back Cuomo — with a margin of error of 4 points that puts Cuomo within striking distance.

With all three remaining in the race, Mamdani would continue to trounce the opposition, taking 43.2% of the vote compared to 28.9% for Cuomo and 19.4% for Sliwa, according to the poll.

Notice that the numbers only add up to around 85% in the 2-way race. That leaves a lot of “undecideds,” enough to give a victory to Cuomo if they went his way. Notice also that if Sliwa dropped out, nearly all of his voters who would be “decided” would go to Cuomo.

However, Sliwa is adamant that he’s not dropping out, and I believe him. He seems to think there’s little difference between Cuomo and Mamdani anyway, as he makes clear in the video I just linked.

And it’s true that they’re both abominable. But they’re not identical. For example, I think that if Mamdani is elected, far more NYC police will quit than if Cuomo is elected, and crime will soar. And of course, Mamdani is highly anti-Israel. Now, maybe in a mayor that’s not so important. But it sets an ominous tone and is part of a worrisome trend.

I assume that a lot of you don’t care about New York, or even actively think if New Yorkers elect Mamdani they will deserve what they get. But I know many people who live there, and it’s my home town. I remember when it was a wonderful place, and not all that long ago.

As William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection says in a post titled “How We Got Mamdani,” this is the fruit of many decades of leftist control of education:

I think the left was very savvy and very strategic. They identified the weakness in our society and the weakness in our society is the educational system. And they understood that if they can get control of the educational system, they can change the country.

Indeed.

We are all obese now

The New Neo Posted on by

Or at least, the vast majority of us are, according to a recent re-definition:

Obesity rates in the United States may increase dramatically under a new definition introduced earlier this year by the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology Commission.

Researchers at Mass General Brigham discovered that applying the updated criteria—which expands beyond the traditional body mass index (BMI) to include measurements of body fat distribution—raised obesity prevalence from around 40 percent to approximately 70 percent among more than 300,000 participants. The increase was especially notable among older adults. The study also revealed that many of the newly classified individuals faced a greater likelihood of negative health outcomes.

Who’s celebrating? The makers of diet drugs and the purveyors of diet programs.

It’s all very odd – particularly since there’s also been evidence that being somewhat overweight – even by the old definition – is somewhat beneficial for the elderly:

In fact, the nationwide study found that people who were slightly overweight in their 50s but kept their weight relatively stable were the most likely to survive over the next 16 years.

They had better survival rates than even normal-weight individuals whose weight increased slightly, but stayed within the normal range.

There are other studies that say something similar:

… [N]umerous studies suggest that carrying some extra weight can sometimes be protective in later life. For people who fall, fat can serve as padding, guarding against fractures. And for people who become seriously ill with conditions such as cancer or advanced kidney disease, that padding can be a source of energy, helping them tolerate demanding therapies. …

Experts are more concerned about a lack of activity in older adults who are overweight or mildly obese (a body mass index in the low 30s) than about weight loss. With minimal or no activity, muscle mass deteriorates and strength decreases, which “raises the risk of developing a disability or a functional impairment” that can interfere with independence, said John Batsis, an obesity researcher and associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill.

Weight loss contributes to inadequate muscle mass insofar as muscle is lost along with fat. For every pound shed, 25% comes from muscle and 75% from fat, on average.

Since older adults have less muscle to begin with, “if they want to lose weight, they need to be willing at the same time to increase physical activity.” said Anne Newman, director of the Center for Aging and Population Health at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

Ideal body weight may be higher. Epidemiologic research suggests that the ideal body mass index (BMI) might be higher for older adults than younger adults. (BMI is a measure of a person’s weight, in kilograms or pounds, divided by the square of their height, in meters or feet.)

One large, well-regarded study found that older adults at either end of the BMI spectrum — those with low BMIs (under 22) and those with high BMIs (over 33) — were at greater risk of dying earlier than those with BMIs in the middle range (22 to 32.9).

Older adults with the lowest risk of earlier deaths had BMIs of 27 to 27.9. According to World Health Organization standards, this falls in the “overweight” range …

And then, to top it all off, there’s this seeming paradox:

Deficiency of the gene melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) is linked with obesity among adults. A recent study has found that the same deficiency also leads to surprising outcomes such as reduced risk of heart disease, lower cholesterol, and triglycerides. These results contradict the well-established correlation between obesity and cardiovascular diseases.

The researchers scanned the genetic profiles of 7,719 children from the Genetics of Obesity Study (GOOS) cohort. They identified 316 probands—first person in a family to draw medical attention to a genetic disorder—and 144 adult family members with obesity due to loss-of-function (LoF) MC4R mutations.

Even after adjusting for weight, these individuals showed better blood pressure profiles and cardiovascular health when compared to 336,728 controls from the UK Biobank.

The gene defect ordinarily causes severe obesity, and I don’t think it’s all that common even in that population. So unless you’re very obese I don’t think there’s any chance you have it.

I think the issue of weight and health is quite poorly understood – and that includes why some people can eat a lot and be thin, and vice versa. Except for the new weight-loss drugs – and who knows how they affect health long-term – it’s very hard for most people to lose weight and keep it off.