Keep in mind that there is a significant enough portion of the population who are overweight, get absolutely no exercise, eat mostly take-out and junk food, drink too much, and/or smoke cigarettes.
You don't need a study to spell out the result. You don't need scientific evidence to compare an individual with a healthy lifestyle vs. someone who matches the criteria above. It's not about what "makes you feel good", it's about what is plainly obvious when you put two people with different lifestyles side-by-side.
You only run into anecdotal micro-analysis bullshit if you're trying to compare two people who are identical in every category above, where the only difference is 30 mins of exercise a day vs. 3 hours.
Source: someone who does everything listed in my first paragraph. You would never put me next to any person in the 80th percentile of health, and make claims about "how difficult a problem this is". It's clear as day.
You're absolutely right: the basic outline is not a difficult problem.
The "difficult problem" I was referring to is taking a sample population and drawing conclusions about how much sitting is OK, what kind of exercise is OK, and whether the above are casually related to factors we otherwise describe as "aging."
For a substantial segment of the population, sitting all day, even with 30 minutes of intense exercise somewhere in the middle, probably does contribute to unfavorable health outcomes.
For others, that might not be so.
For many people, there may be underlying causes of both unhealthy habits and unfavorable health outcomes.
You don't need a study to spell out the result. You don't need scientific evidence to compare an individual with a healthy lifestyle vs. someone who matches the criteria above. It's not about what "makes you feel good", it's about what is plainly obvious when you put two people with different lifestyles side-by-side.
You only run into anecdotal micro-analysis bullshit if you're trying to compare two people who are identical in every category above, where the only difference is 30 mins of exercise a day vs. 3 hours.
Source: someone who does everything listed in my first paragraph. You would never put me next to any person in the 80th percentile of health, and make claims about "how difficult a problem this is". It's clear as day.