Normal Weight Obesity: Can You Be Obese with a Normal Body Weight?

Maintaining a normal body weight can be a challenge for many people. The medical community has long supported exercise and healthy eating choices to help patients achieve their ideal body weight. Unfortunately, staying healthy and disease free may be more complicated than just achieving a normal body weight. Recent evidence shows that more than half of people who have achieved their ideal body weight according to medically accepted standards may suffer from a condition called normal weight obesity.

How do you know if you have normal weight obesity? Normal weight obesity applies to those people who have a normal BMI or body mass index but still have a high percentage of body fat. Both BMI and body fat percentages can be measured by various means to determine whether you meet the criteria for normal weight obesity. Body fat percentages of greater than twenty percent in men and thirty percent in women are considered to be diagnostic for this condition.

Why is the issue of normal weight obesity so important? Studies have shown that people who have a high body fat percentage are at a higher risk of heart disease even if their body weight is normal. They're also at higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome which increases the risk not only of heart disease but of type 2 diabetes. In fact, normal weight women who met the criteria for normal weight obesity had a three times increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome when compared to women with normal weight and a normal body fat percentage. They were also four times more likely to develop heart disease.