Research
Hormonal
Normal Weight Obesity (NWO) is a distinct phenotype characterized by normal BMI but high body fat percentage (>30% women, >25% men) and low lean mass, carrying significant cardiovascular and metabolic risk.
If you are normal weight, don't assume you are healthy. Get a body composition test. If you have high body fat and low muscle (NWO), you are at risk for diabetes and heart disease. Focus on building muscle and reducing visceral fat through resistance training and protein intake.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
De Lorenzo et al. comparing the classification of obesity according to the BMI with that according to the percentage of fat mass... 28% of the participants classified as normal weight only on the basis of the BMI values resulted in pre-obesity condition... NWO syndrome is characterized by normal weight individuals but genetically obesity, in an early low-grade inflammatory state.
Why this rating
Based on specific cohort studies cited by the authors.
Source
Why primary obesity is a disease?
Antonino De Lorenzo et al. · Journal of Translational Medicine · 2019
DOI 10.1186/s12967-019-1919-y
narrative_reviewCited 358×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Obesity is a primary multifactorial disease (adiposopathy) driven by pathological adipose tissue dysfunction, not merely excess weight, and requires diagnosis based on body fat percentage and metabolic risk rather than BMI alone.Good
- The 'Obesity Paradox' (lower mortality in obese patients with certain chronic diseases) is largely an artifact of using BMI, which fails to distinguish between high fat mass and high muscle mass, and ignores the inflammatory status of visceral fat.Good
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