Research
Hormonal
BMI is an imperfect individual predictor of obesity-related risk because metabolically healthy individuals with high BMI may still have elevated cardiovascular risk and mortality compared to normal-weight individuals.
Even if your blood sugar and cholesterol are normal, carrying excess weight (BMI ≥ 30) still increases your risk of heart problems and early death compared to being a normal weight. You should still aim for weight loss to reduce this residual risk.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Because BMI and other measurements of fat mass do not fully characterize obesity as a disease state, current treatment recommendations for adult obesity incorporate individualized disease assessment... BMI does not indicate the degree to which excess adiposity may be adversely affecting health in individual patients.
Why this rating
Based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of large cohort studies.
Source
Challenging obesity: Patient, provider, and expert perspectives on the roles of available and emerging nonsurgical therapies
Caroline M. Apovian et al. · Obesity · 2015
DOI 10.1002/oby.21140
narrative_reviewCited 72×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Comprehensive lifestyle management, including reduced calorie diets, increased physical activity, and behavioral intervention, is the foundational cornerstone of all obesity treatment and is appropriate for all individuals who may benefit from intervention.Good
- Pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery are more intensive interventions that should be reserved for individuals with greater health risk due to obesity-related complications or those who struggle to lose weight with lifestyle management alone.Good
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