Some hormone problems may cause overweight and obesity, such as underactive thyroid, Cushing syndrome and polycystic ovary syndrome. Certain medicines also may cause weight gain, including some corticosteroids, antidepressants, and seizure medicines. Studies also have found that the less people sleep, the more likely they are to have overweight or obesity. Food and Activity People gain weight when they eat more calories than they burn through activity. Environment The world around us influences our ability to maintain a healthy weight.
Several parts of your body, such as your stomach, intestines, pancreas, and fat tissue, use hormones to control how your brain decides if you are hungry or full. There are many risk factors for overweight and obesity. Some risk factors can be changed, such as unhealthy lifestyle habits and environments. Other risk factors, such as age, family history and genetics, race and ethnicity, and sex, cannot be changed.
Heathy lifestyle changes can decrease your risk for developing overweight and obesity. Lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating patterns, not enough sleep, and high amounts of stress can increase your risk for overweight and obesity. Lack of physical activity due to high amounts of TV, computer, videogame or other screen usage has been associated with a high body mass index. Healthy lifestyle changes, such as being physically active and reducing screen time, can help you aim for a healthy weight.
Visit Heart-healthy eating for more information about healthy eating patterns. Many studies have seen a high BMI in people who do not get enough sleep. Some studies have seen a relationship between sleep and the way our bodies use nutrients for energy and how lack of sleep can affect hormones that control hunger urges. Acute stress and chronic stress affect the brain and trigger the production of hormones, such as cortisol, that control our energy balances and hunger urges.
Acute stress can trigger hormone changes that make you not want to eat. If the stress becomes chronic, hormone changes can make you eat more and store more fat. Childhood obesity remains a serious problem in the United States, and some populations are more at risk for childhood obesity than others.
The risk of unhealthy weight gain increases as you age. Adults who have a healthy BMI often start to gain weight in young adulthood and continue to gain weight until 60 to 65 years old, when they tend to start losing weight. Genetic studies have found that overweight and obesity can run in families, so it is possible that our genes or DNA can cause these conditions.
Research studies have found that certain DNA elements are associated with obesity. Learn more about these DNA changes. Also, studies have shown that obese fathers have DNA changes in their sperm that can be passed on to their children.
Overweight and obesity is highly prevalent in some racial and ethnic minority groups. Rates of obesity in American adults are highest in blacks, followed by Hispanics, then whites. This is true for men or women. While Asian men and women have the lowest rates of unhealthy BMIs, they may have high amounts of unhealthy fat in the abdomen. Samoans may be at risk for overweight and obesity because they may carry a DNA variant that is associated with increased BMI but not with common obesity-related complications.
In the United States, obesity is more common in black or Hispanic women than in black or Hispanic men. For example, women tend to store less unhealthy fat in the abdomen than men do. Overweight and obesity is also common in women with polycystic ovary syndrome PCOS. This is an endocrine condition that causes large ovaries and prevents proper ovulation, which can reduce fertility. Children and adults should be screened at least annually to see if they have a high or increasing body mass index BMI , which allows doctors to recommend healthy lifestyle changes to prevent overweight and obesity.
To screen for overweight and obesity, doctors measure BMI using calculations that depend on whether you are a child or an adult. Body mass index BMI is used to determine if you or your child are underweight, healthy, or overweight or obese. Children are underweight if their BMI is below the 5th percentile, healthy weight if their BMI is between the 5th to less than the 85th percentile, overweight if their BMI is the 85th percentile to less than the 95th percentile, and obese if their BMI is the 95th percentile or above.
Adults are underweight if their BMI is below If your BMI indicates you are getting close to being overweight, or if you have certain risk factors , your doctor may recommend you adopt healthy lifestyle changes to prevent you from becoming overweight and obese. Changes include healthy eating, being physically active, aiming for a healthy weight , and getting healthy amounts of sleep.
Read healthy lifestyle changes for more information. There are no specific symptoms of overweight and obesity. The signs of overweight and obesity include a high body mass index BMI and an unhealthy body fat distribution that can be estimated by measuring your waist circumference. Obesity can cause complications in many parts of your body.
Another sign of overweight and obesity is having an unhealthy body fat distribution. Fatty tissue is found in different parts of your body and has many functions. Having an increased waist circumference suggests that you have increased amounts of fat in your abdomen. An increased waist circumference is a sign of obesity and can increase your risk for obesity-related complications.
Visceral fat is the fatty tissue inside of your abdomen and organs. Did you know inflammation is thought to play a role in the onset of certain obesity-related complications?
Researchers now know more about visceral fat, which is deep in the abdomen of overweight and obese patients. Visceral fat releases factors that promote inflammation. Chronic obesity-related inflammation is thought to lead to insulin resistance and diabetes, changes in the liver or non-alcoholic fatty acid liver disease, and cancers.
More research is needed to understand what triggers inflammation in some obese patients and to find new treatments. Your doctor may diagnose overweight and obesity based on your medical history, physical exams that confirm you have a high body mass index BMI and possibly a high waist circumference, and tests to rule out other medical conditions.
To diagnose overweight and obesity, doctors measure BMI using calculations that depend on whether you are a child or an adult. Your doctor will ask about your eating and physical activity habits, family history, and will see if you have other risk factors Your doctor may ask if you have any other signs or symptoms.
This information can help determine if you have other conditions that may be causing you to be overweight or obese or if you have complications from being overweight or obese.
During your physical exam, your doctor will measure your weight and height to calculate your BMI. Your doctor may also measure your waist circumference to estimate the amount of unhealthy fat in your abdomen. In adults, a waist circumference over 35 inches for women who are not pregnant or 40 inches for men can help diagnose obesity and assess risk of future complications.
If you are of South Asian or Central and South American descent, your doctor may use smaller waist circumference values to diagnose your obesity.
Visit Assessing Your Weight for more information. Read Living With for more information about why it is important to monitor your waist circumference to assess you r risk for complications. Y our doctor may order some of the following tests to identify medical conditions that may be causing your overweight and obesity. Treatment for overweight and obesity depends on the cause and severity of your condition. Possible treatments include healthy lifestyle changes, behavioral weight-loss treatment programs, medicines, and possibly surgery.
You may need treatments for any complications that you have. To help you aim for and maintain a healthy weight, your doctor may recommend that you adopt lifelong healthy lifestyle changes. Making lifelong healthy lifestyle changes, such as heart-healthy eating and physical activity, can help you modify your energy balance to help you aim for and maintain a healthy weight.
For example:. Your doctor may recommend you enroll in individual or group behavioral weight-loss programs to treat your overweight and obesity. In these programs, a trained healthcare professional will customize a weight-loss plan for you.
This plan will include a moderately-reduced calorie diet, physical activity goals, and behavioral strategies to help you make and maintain these lifestyle changes.
Read Living With for more information about required follow-up for these behavioral treatment programs. Researchers know that our brains can become patterned so that we feel pleasure or reward from eating.
This can make us unconsciously crave food so our bodies feel that sense of pleasure. It can also make it hard to change our eating patterns, lose weight, or maintain a healthy weight.
Researchers are studying whether cognitive behavioral therapies can be an effective treatment for overweight and obesity by retraining the brain to not associate pleasure with food and the act of eating. When healthy lifestyle changes are not enough, your doctor may treat your overweight and obesity with FDA-approved medicines.
These medicines work in the following parts of your body. Weight loss medicines are not recommended as a single treatment for weight loss. These medicines can help you lose weight but when combined with lifestyle changes may result in greater weight loss.
Some of these medicines should not be used if you have certain conditions or are taking certain medicines. Also, these medicines have side effects. Talk to your doctor if you are pregnant, planning to get pregnant, breast feeding, or have a family history of cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure, heart attack, or stroke. Some patients with obesity do not respond to healthy lifestyle changes and medicines.
When these patients develop certain obesity-related complications, they may be eligible for the following surgeries. Talk to your doctor to learn more about the benefits and risks of each type of surgery. Possible complications include bleeding, infection, internal rupture of sutures, or even death. Read gastric bypass surgery for more information. First, these surgeries reduce the amount of food stored in the stomach and the amount of calories your body can take in.
This can help your body restore energy balance. Second, these surgeries change the levels of certain hormones and the way the brain responds to these hormones to control hunger urges. After surgery, some people are less interested in eating or they prefer to eat healthier foods. In some cases, genetic differences may affect how much weight loss patients experience after bariatric surgery. If you have been diagnosed with overweight and obesity, it is important that you continue your treatment.
Read about tips to help you aim for a healthy weight, the benefit of finding and continuing a behavioral weight-loss program, and ways your doctor may monitor if your condition is stable, worsening, or improving and assess your risk for complications. Changing lifestyle habits takes time and patience.
Follow these tips to help you maintain the healthy lifestyle changes your doctor recommended to aim for a healthy weight. Some people find it is easier to aim and maintain a healthy weight when they have support from a weight-loss specialist or other individuals who also are trying to lose weight. Behavioral weight-loss programs can provide this support, and they can help you set goals that are specific to your needs.
Your weight-loss specialist usually reviews or modifies your goals every six months based on your progress and overall health. When you are choosing a behavioral weight-loss program, you may want to consider whether the program should:. You should visit your health care provider periodically to monitor for possible complications , which if left untreated can be life-threatening.
Your doctor may do any of the following to monitor your condition. We are committed to advancing science and translating discoveries into clinical practice to promote the prevention and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders including overweight and obesity.
Learn about the current and future NHLBI efforts to improve health through research and scientific discovery. Learn about the following ways NHLBI continues to translate research and science into improved health for people who are overweight or obese.
Learn about some of the pioneering research contributions we have made over the years that have improved clinical care. In support of our mission , we are committed to advancing overweight and obesity research in part through the following ways. To learn more about clinical trials at the NIH Clinical Center or to talk to someone about a study that might fit your needs, call the Office of Patient Recruitment Learn more about participating in a clinical trial.
View all trials from ClinicalTrials. Visit Children and Clinical Studies to hear experts, parents, and children talk about their experiences with clinical research. After reading our overweight and obesity Health Topic, you may be interested in additional information found in the following resources. The purpose of the virtual con Overweight and Obesity. Also known as Adiposity. Overweight and obesity are increasingly common conditions in the United States.
They are caused by the increase in the size and the amount of fat cells in the body. Doctors measure body mass index BMI and waist circumference to screen and diagnose overweight and obesity. Obesity is a serious medical condition that can cause complications such as metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, diabetes, high blood cholesterol, cancers and sleep disorders.
Treatment depends on the cause and severity of your condition and whether you have complications. Treatments include lifestyle changes, such as heart-healthy eating and increased physical activity, and Food and Drug Administration FDA -approved weight-loss medicines. For some people, surgery may be a treatment option.
Explore this Health Topic to learn more about overweight and obesity, our role in research and clinical trials to improve health, and where to find more information. See also. Causes - Overweight and Obesity. Energy imbalances cause the body to store fat. Your body uses certain nutrients such as carbohydrates or sugars, proteins, and fats from the foods you eat to: make energy for immediate use to power routine daily body functions and physical activity. Sugars are stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles.
Fats are stored mainly as triglyceride in fat tissue. Read more. Defining the genetic architecture of the predisposition to obesity: a challenging but not insurmountable task external icon.
Am J Clin Nutr ; Genetics of obesity: what have we learned? Epub Aug Department of Health and Human Services. Current estimates of the economic cost of obesity in the United States. Obesity Research. What is the economic case for treating obesity? The economic impact of obesity in the United States.
Annual medical spending attributable to obesity: payer-and service-specific estimates. Health Aff Millwood. Indirect costs of obesity: a review of the current literature. Obes Rev. Mission: Readiness Council for a Strong America; Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Minus Related Pages. On This Page. To receive email updates about this topic, enter your email address.
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