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kennyadamyesterday at 10:25 PM5 repliesview on HN

Genuine question: What is the difference between overfat and overweight? Isn’t the extra weight in an overweight person comprised of fat?


Replies

arximboldiyesterday at 10:32 PM

A muscular person can be "overweight" by BMI standards but not overfat at all. This is the case for many types of athletes, specially in strength disciplines but not only. It is the case in the fitness world that people ignore BMI and are intesterested in body-fat-percentage instead. This is hard to measure accurately so not so useful metric for the general population.

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piva00yesterday at 10:27 PM

Not necessarily, a bodybuilder or very athletic person might be overweight in the sense of above average for their height but not overfat.

hansvmyesterday at 10:52 PM

The dominant discrepancies are "expected" fat (boobs, etc), and "unexpected" muscle (cyclists, body builders, hard labour careers, etc). I'm currently around 10-15lb overfat and 40-50lb overweight [0]. Only the former statistic matters.

[0] And that, at least somewhat, tracks visual perceptions. Nobody looks at me with a shirt on and believes I need to lose weight, because 10-15lb isn't _that_ much extra on a tall frame. If I were 40-50lb overfat then that would be painfully obvious regardless.

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zdragnartoday at 12:04 AM

I've been considered borderline or obese by the standard BMI index for 20 years at least, but for a lot of that had very little to no visible extra weight. A lot of that was just plain having more muscle than the average the standards are built around, but I also suspect BMI gets to be really inaccurate for tall people. I would look anorexic if I had to drop enough weight to be considered not overweight.

sn9yesterday at 11:34 PM

"Overfat" just refers to having too much fat.

"Overweight" can mean the same thing for weight, but it also refers to those with a BMI specifically between 25 and 30, and those with BMIs greater than 30 are classified as "obese".