Is it the same or obesity is the proper name for overweight people. Can anyone clarify this!
Thank you.

Being overweight is a catch all term for anything over your healthy Body Mass Index, which I think is about 23 or 24% for the average woman, less for men. Obesity is the term for anything over 20% overweight, or at least it was a few years ago. Someone correct me if there are new standards.

Obesity is defined as BMI > 28. I don't really know criteria for overweight. Probably, something between 25 and 28, since normal adult BMI is 18-25.

[This message has been edited by bird123 (edited 09-13-2002).]

yeah being overweight is less then being obese

actually being overweight and obese are different, you can be a muscle man and be overweight yet not obese, or a muscle women, you can be lean and yet be overweight, overweight is just being over the numbers they say you should be obesity is being over fat (fat to muscle ratio) that equals 20 percent or higher than you should be for good health,

of course those charts may say otherwise, but they list lean people as obese because they are large, but they are large not due to fat so the numbers are misleading, take the charts figures of what you should weight with a grain of salt.

RR

Obese is if your 50 pounds or over what is suppposed to be your average weight (which is determined by your height). Anything between that average number for your height and obesity is overweight.