According to a new study, some of you reading this who had a perfectly normal BMI might now be considered overweight or even obese, and you didn’t gain a single pound to earn that ignominious distinction.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and reported by The New York Times, suggests that America’s notoriously stubborn obesity problem is actually a much bigger, heftier problem than once thought. Researchers at the University of Southern California found that the traditional body mass index measurements are leaving out a whole lot of people who carry unhealthy levels of body fat despite appearing “normal” on paper.
This raises the question of what “normal” even is. The problem lies in how BMI only compares weight to height; it can’t distinguish between fat, muscle, or bone, and it doesn’t account for where fat is stored in the body, which matters. Visceral fat in the gut, for instance, is a big indicator of healthiness, even if the rest of the person’s body does not appear overweight.
Using a new international definition of obesity developed by experts and endorsed by The Lancet, researchers looked beyond BMI and included waist measurements, body fat estimates, and evidence of obesity-related health problems. Once all that stuff was factored in, they found that roughly 26 percent of people with a normal BMI and more than half of those classified as merely overweight could actually meet the criteria for what is now called “clinical obesity.”
Are You Unknowingly Obese Now?
Under this new, more nuanced definition, obesity isn’t just having a little extra weight. Now it’s been expanded to include chronic disease linked to organ dysfunction, metabolic problems, and any physical limitations caused by any of that pesky extra fat. If none of that applies to you and you think you skirted the Scarlet letter of the word “obesity,” think again, because people with excess fat but no current health damage would now be categorized as “preclinical obesity,” meaning you’re not yet clinically obese, but you are well on the road.
Every new study has its critics, and there are some who say that the researchers involved in the study probably overestimated obesity rates because conditions like heart failure or liver disease can have causes unrelated to body fat. A valid point, but even still, the whole thing represents a growing shift in the medical community caring less about what the numbers on the scale say since there are so many other indicators of weight-related health issues that need to be factored in if we want a better, more textured understanding of our health.
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