I agree. Course I probably should be using the word obese too much as I didn't mean "morbidly obese" necessarily. I am not necessarily talking about someone who can barely walk. There are many more mobile individuals who will still lose fat very quickly but that don't need to be doing much more that what IK and you alluded to.
What I trying to get at here, besides what I said above is the idea that someone with significant fat to burn should be occupied with putting on muscle. As IK said, and as I agree, maintaining would be a plus but the main point would be spurring on fat loss and for initial strength gains, movement, etc.
So let me point out that when we are talking about overweight individuals it is in regards to a general unfit population not in regards to "our" population. What is overweight to us can actuall be very healthy in general. And I think you need to start out with those general definitions before a later shift can be made to a new parameter.
But the message that most people get in the general "fitness media" is the John Basedow message that they will or should put on slabs of muscle and that will ramp up their metabolism. I.E. the muscle will burn the fat. This is bullshit. You will not put on so much muscle in a realistic timeframe that the muscle itself will have a big impact if your are "significantly overweight". It's the EPOC effect that will be most important, as I'm sure IK will agree. And this goes to people's expectations, so I don't think it is minor. It's the kind of thing that causes people to go in hog-wild doing everything under the sun and too much of it only to burn out a month later when their expectations aren't met and they are over-reaching.
Still waiting on responses to this
http://www.bodybuilding.net/47191-9-post.html
BEER.