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The most important part of being a normal weight isn’t looking a certain way—it’s feeling good and staying healthy. Having too much body fat can be harmful to the body in many ways. The good news is that it’s never too late to make changes in eating and exercise habits to control your weight, and those changes don’t have to be as big as you might think. So if you or someone you know is obese or overweight, this article can give you information and tips for dealing with the problem by adopting a healthier lifestyle.
    Being obese and being overweight are not exactly the same thing. An obese person has a large amount of extra body fat, net just a few extra pounds.  People who are obese are very overweight and at risk for serious health problems.
    To determine if someone is obese, doctors and other health care professionals often use a measurement called body mass index(BMI). First, a doctor measures a person’s height and weight. Then the doctor uses these numbers to calculate another number, the BMI.
    Once the doctor has calculated a child’s or teen’s BMI, he or she will plot this number on a specific chart to see how it compares to other people of the same age and gender. A person with a BMI above the 95th percentile(meaning the BMI is greater than that of 95% of people of the same age and gender) is generally considered overweight. A person with a BMI between the 85th and 95th percentiles typically is considered at risk for overweight. Obesity is the term used for extreme overweight. There are some exceptions to this formula, though. For instance, someone who is very muscular(like a bodybuilder) may have a high BMI without being obese because the excess weight is from extra muscle, not fat.
    People gain weight when the body takes in more calories than it burns off. Those extra calories are stored as fat. The amount of weight gain that leads to obesity doesn’t happen in a few weeks or a month. Because being obese is more than just being a few pounds overweight, people who are obese have usually been getting more calories than they need for years.