Comment by safety1st

You may simply not be aware of the extent of the movement. The fat acceptance movement has attempted to recast the issue not as a health issue, but as a civil rights issue, where criticizing fatness is violating the civil rights of fat people. There is a National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_acceptance_movement

Online there's tons of content encouraging fat gain - for example Tiktok women celebrating "BBW" as a sexy thing and the r/PlusSize subreddit, where members encourage each other to remain "big and beautiful" and post anti-science content claiming that being fat is healthy. I saw for example a post by a 20-something woman who was morbidly obese and had had a blood clot in her leg but everyone was still insisting she was a "healthy" type of fat person, herself included.

Of course you will find very few doctors who will endorse this movement or its ideas. And the vast majority of us understand that obesity is unhealthy. But the fat acceptance movement has almost certainly played some role in making people believe that obesity is less dangerous than the research shows.

I won't be shy about my view here, obesity is a terrible disease and if you have it you must take steps to cure it. If you don't your quality of life will be lower in dozens of ways and you will die younger, probably not in a comfortable way. (Not to mention that its economic cost is enormous... a principal way that you can reduce health care costs personally, is to not be fat.)

First and foremost we must renew society's understanding that this is a disease, acceptance is not an option, and it must be prevented, treated and cured.