More people could count as obese under newly proposed definition — here's what you need to know
First proposed in January 2025, their new framework includes more body measurements beyond BMI and distinguishes between "preclinical" and "clinical" obesity.
Key points
- For a given patient being assessed for obesity, the proposed guidelines would suggest using at least one additional body measurement alongside BMI and having their doctor review their medical history for other signs of bodily or organ dysfunction.
- In addition to these body measurements, the proposed criteria look at 18 conditions and signs of bodily or organ dysfunction that are related to obesity, such as cardiovascular diseases, joint pain and sleep apnea.
- Obesity is linked to a range of health problems — including heart disease, diabetes and early death — but it can be hard to know who is most at risk for these outcomes.
In other words, with the new approach, more people would be accurately diagnosed with obesity and fewer people would be misdiagnosed than are with BMI alone.
There are special scans and exams that send weak electrical signals through the body to measure a person's body fat percentage directly, but criteria based on body measurements are more accessible across clinical settings.
Additional details
- That means that two people with the same BMI, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio may be classified differently, depending on whether they have other conditions.
- (Image credit: Marco Ortiz via Getty Images) Additionally, the different BMI categories — such as "overweight" and "obese" — don't carry the same risks for all patients.
- Preclinical obesity, by contrast, is when a person is at risk of this disease state and may need interventions to avoid obesity-related dysfunction.
- BMI doesn't capture nuances and variation between patients, experts argue, and it limits what doctors can say about a given person's health risk.
- Doctors and researchers often use body mass index (BMI) as a convenient tool to assess patients, but this metric does not account for individual differences in body composition, scientists have long argued.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
Advertisement
Every article behind this summary — 1 article from 1 outlet
Get stories like this in your inbox.
Subscribe — it's freeOne free email at 6am — your topics, deduplicated, five minutes. No account, no paywall.