Overweight

Overweight is the condition of a person when they have more fat in their body than is healthy.

Overweight means the person's body is too heavy. To find out if a person is overweight, you can calculate their body mass index. People with a BMI of 25 or more are overweight. Anything above 30 is obese (very overweight). Overweight used to be a BMI of 27 or more. In 1998 this changed.^[1]

Being overweight is associated with health problems such as Type 2 diabetes.^[2] Obesity is associated with greater health problems than overweight. In 2006 Adams et al. estimated that the risk of death increases by 20 to 40 percent among overweight people.^[3] Some people think that being overweight is not as unhealthy as is commonly thought. A 2013 review of 97 PubMed articles with a sample size of 2.88 million found that overweight is associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality (death) than 'normal' weight.^[4] Body fat contains energy that the body can use to heal when it is sick. 51.3% of overweight adults are metabolically healthy. Metabolically healthy overweight women are no more likely to die or have a heart attack or stroke than metabolically healthy normal weight women.^[5]

Doctors often tell overweight people that losing weight would be good for their health. People usually try to lose weight by eating less. This is called 'dieting'. They may exercise too. Dieting is often ineffective, unless it is done healthily in the long term (avoiding crash diets). 41% of dieters weigh more four to five years after the end of the diet than before it began.^[6]

Some people might use herbal teas, powders and pills to help to lower their mass.^[7]

Animals can also be overweight.

Overweight is not just associated with bad health. People think that being overweight means that a person is lazy or bad. Overweight people are often treated badly by other people for because of this. This is called fatphobia.

Almost 1.5 billion adults are overweight in the world, with another 400 million obese (in total around 25-30% of adult population). The amount of overweight people is increasing.^[8]

1. ↑ "CNN - Who's fat? New definition adopted - June 17, 1998". edition.cnn.com.
2. ↑ Hart, C. L.; Hole, D. J.; Lawlor, D. A.; Davey Smith, G. (1 January 2007). "How many cases of Type 2 diabetes mellitus are due to being overweight in middle age? Evidence from the Midspan prospective cohort studies using mention of diabetes mellitus on hospital discharge or death records". Diabetic Medicine: A Journal of the British Diabetic Association. 24 (1): 73–80. doi:10.1111/j.1464-5491.2007.02016.x. PMID 17227327. S2CID 24615353 – via PubMed.
3. ↑ Adams, Kenneth F.; Schatzkin, Arthur; Harris, Tamara B.; Kipnis, Victor; Mouw, Traci; Ballard-Barbash, Rachel; Hollenbeck, Albert; Leitzmann, Michael F. (24 August 2006). "Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Persons 50 to 71 Years Old". New England Journal of Medicine. 355 (8): 763–778. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa055643. PMID 16926275 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.
4. ↑ Graubard, Barry I.; Orpana, Heather; Kit, Brian K.; Flegal, Katherine M. (2 January 2013). "Association of All-Cause Mortality With Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis". JAMA. 309 (1): 71–82. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.113905. PMC 4855514. PMID 23280227 – via jamanetwork.com.
5. ↑ Sowers, MaryFran R.; Wylie-Rosett, Judith; Rajpathak, Swapnil; McGinn, Aileen P.; Reynolds, Kristi; Muntner, Paul; Wildman, Rachel P. (11 August 2008). "The Obese Without Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Clustering and the Normal Weight With Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Clustering: Prevalence and Correlates of 2 Phenotypes Among the US Population (NHANES 1999-2004)". Archives of Internal Medicine. 168 (15): 1617–1624. doi:10.1001/archinte.168.15.1617. PMID 18695075 – via jamanetwork.com.
6. ↑ "Medicare's Search for Effective Obesity Treatments" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-12-24. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
7. ↑ "5 Types of Tea That May Help With Weight Loss". EverydayHealth.com. 2021-10-26. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
8. ↑ Ng, M.; Fleming, T.; Robinson, M.; Thomson, B.; Graetz, N.; Margono, C.; et al. (29 May 2014). "Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980–2013: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013". The Lancet. 384 (9945): 766–781. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)60460-8. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 4624264. PMID 24880830.