OBESITY - DEFINING OBESITY - WEIGHT LOSS

DEFINING OBESITY

Obesity is defined by several methods. The most commonly used method is the BMI, or Body Mass Index. This index is a mathematical formula using height and weight to scale someone's proportional weight relative to others.

Someone is defined as overweight with an increased body weight in relation to their height. On the BMI scale, someone is overweight with a reading over 25. This reading is not always indicative of being over-fat, as some athletes possess larger quantities of lean muscle mass, which would cause a high weight in relation to height, but they would not have very much fat in their bodies.

Someone is obese by having a BMI of over 30. Obese means the person has excessive amounts of body fat in their body, or adipose tissue in relation to their lean muscle mass. Obesity can be determined also by a technique which measures the waist in relation to the hips. A high ratio tells doctors that they have fat tissue by where the fat sits on the body.

Obesity is also measured in relation to data compiled from the situation of a demographic sample used to calculate the average weight for each height.

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Dean Ornish