Obesity is a condition where a person has accumulated so much body fat that it might have a negative effect on their health.
If a person's body weight is at least 20% higher than it should be, he or she is considered obese. If your Body Mass Index (BMI) is between 25 and 29.9 you are considered overweight. If your BMI is 30 or over you are considered obese. If you're wondering what your ideal weight might be, take a look at our article, how much should I weigh?
What isBody Mass Index (BMI)?
In the early 20th century, after modern advances allowed us to better understand the negative effects of obesity on health and mortality, the insurance companies and the medical community struggled to come up with a way to measure a person’s level of body fat. Inventions such as using a caliper to measure body fat by measuring thickness of the skin provided the medical community a way to get an individual’s body fat percentage.
However, actuaries, sociologists and medical researchers found that it was difficult to gather data on body fat for an entire population of people. Since gender, height and weight were very easy to get, they struggled with formulas to determine obesity percentage among a larger group of people using the data available.
