Height and Weight for Women

Overweight or Overfat?

Fat is the form in which energy is stored. If a diet provides excess calories, they are stored as fat. Obesity is having too much fat. It is difficult to define exactly when a person goes from being slightly fat to being obese. A standard method is to compare a person's body weight with the "ideal" weight for someone who has the same height and frame. If your weight over 20% more than this weight, you are obese.

Body weight is not always a good measure of the amount of fat you have though. A person who exercises loses fat and builds up muscle, which is heavier than fat. So a physically fit person can have a body weight that is above normal, but an amount of fat that is below normal. By control, a person who is not very active may weigh just as much as physically fit person, but the inactive person will have more fat and less muscle. Generally, it is normal for a woman to have up to 20-25% of her total body weight in fat.

                         

Height shown is without shoes, and weight is without clothes.