What good is the overweight cutoff in women?

Comments about their body fat percentage cutoff for women.

They defined obesity, based on body fat percentages, 25% in men and 35% in women.

I must slip in a little comment here. “Obesity” is the wrong word to use with these percentages. “Overweight” is the correct word.

The 35% number for women is a little higher than other articles, but they justify it by stating that it treats men and women equally:

" 7% of the females and 8% of the males would be falsely classified as obese with the BMI-based formula. These figures are 4 and 5% for the impedance-based formula".

This justification (to treat men and women equally) is excellent. Other studies have tended to treat men and women unequally, by having vastly different specificity between genders. It is also noteworthy that 7% and 8% false positives is equivalent to 93% and 92% specificity, which supports my own belief that Body Composition criteria should have high specificity rather than high sensitivity.

Some papers say 30%, some say 33% and this paper says 35% body fat percentage, is the cut-off threshold for defining overweight in women.

But even those cutoff values would need an age adjustment too, right?

Absolutely right. Thanks for mentioning. Add 5% for older women. So a woman age 67 would be at the normal cutoff at body fat percentage of 38% (33+5).

Is that official?

No, I’m just throwing around numbers for argument sake.

This quote is confusing:

" Generally, the BMI-based formula tends to underestimate BF% in younger subjects and overestimate it in older subjects. The impedence based formula tends to do the opposite".

I’m surprised about that. Usually, at a BMI criteria of 25 kg/m2, young people have more muscle and less fat, and older people have more fat and less muscle.

But bottom-line, this study concludes that current Body Mass Index overweight and obesity criteria are satisfactory for European caucasians.

WHAT? I can’t believe I wrote that last sentence in 2002.

What’s wrong with it.

It’s off-topic.

Update in 2014. The better conclusion is: that for women, a body fat percentage cutoff of 35% is where overweight-ness begins. For men, the overweight threshold of body fat percentage is 25%.

Here’s a link to a Statistics on overweight and obesity. I think it was made by people who benefit from making obesity into an epidemic.

Also watch out for words like “The Global Epidemic of Obesity”. That’s propaganda, just like “The War on drugs“.

Treating men and women equally, is good. But I have to point out that Body Fat Percentage of 25% for Men, is also a historical assumed value, not a proved thing.

And you’re a big advocate for age adjustments, and these body fat percents, are lacking that.