Compare "Marginally Overweight" to CDC’s BMI=25

By Steven B. Halls, MD

In an effort to maintain some compatibility between the halls.md v2 method and the standard CDC & WHO definition of "overweight", the halls.md v2 method has re-introduced the phrase "marginally overweight", to refer to BMI values around the magic number of 25 kg/m².

If you refer to the chart below, the CDC standard defines "overweight"as BMI >= 25 kg/m² in adult Men and Women over age 17. Notice the abrupt corner in the curve at that level and the flat line across all adult ages.

But for the halls.md v2 method, men and women have different curves, (blue and pink, separated by 1 kg/m²), and the transition is more gradual. BMI values above these lines are called "marginally overweight" in the halls.md method.

But there is a potential problem with this approach. All women with a Body Mass Index just under 25, may be disappointed to be labelled as "marginally overweight", when they used to be considered "Normal" by the CDC criteria. This situation is even worse for younger women, and worse again for taller women ( since the halls.md v2 criteria adjusts downward in taller women).

This an area where some feedback would be useful. You can be sure that I’ll receive emails from women who don’t like this approach, and if that’s you, please email me. But if this approach works for you and seems OK, please email me too. Depending on the balance of feedback I receive, I may have to shift up these curves and flatten them a little more.

Further reading

1. What are overweight and obesity? National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. NHLBI.

January 29, 2015 update. Time goes by. I made this page in around year 2000, and not a peep, not a single email raised any concerns, which is fine with me. After all, this is a rather obscure page, nobody really cares about the word “marginally”.

The other concern was that women who have a BMI of, lets say, 24.9, would not like being labelled marginally overweight. Nobody complained, but in 2015, I’m on the lookout for making a ‘version 3’ that will improve things even more. It’s clear to me now, that as people get older, the pink and blue ones have to go even higher.