What is the difference between overweight and obesity?

Have you ever wondered if doctors would class your weight as being harmful to your health? What is the difference between being overweight and being morbidly obese? The body mass index (BMI), which the World Health Organisation (WHO) uses to make a distinction between being overweight from having class 1 obesity, provides an initial indication. It states that a BMI of 25 indicates that someone is overweight. Class 1 obesity is present in people who have a BMI of 30 or higher. The classification differs slightly depending on your age and gender.

Class 1 obesity – a sample calculation

BMI is expressed in the unit of measurement kg/m².

Example: A 30-year-old woman is 1.65 metres tall and weighs 85 kilograms.

Result: The woman has a BMI of 31.22 and can see from the table that she has class 1 obesity.

Example: A 30-year-old man weighs 95 kilograms and is 1.75 metres tall; he receives the result of 31.02 from the BMI calculator.

Result: The man also has class 1 obesity. But, according to the table, he would have to lose less weight than the woman to be classed as just overweight. The BMI model stipulates that men may weigh slightly more overall than women.

The multimodal concept