. "4 Weight Management." Assessing Readiness in Military Women: The Relationship of Body, Composition, Nutrition, and Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1998.
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V. R. Rao, U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., 1996) with 13.9 ± 0.1 percent at a BMI of 27.3 or greater (the Healthy People 2000 [DHHS, 1991] definition of obesity for women age 20 and older). The prevalence of overweight by this definition increased with age, from 3.6 ± 0.1 percent for women under age 21 to 28.4 ± 0.2 percent for women over age 40. The prevalence of overweight was approximately twice as high for reservists as for active-duty women and tended to be higher for Hispanic women than for African American and Caucasian women. Comparable data were not available from the other branches of service.
The 1995 Survey of Health-Related Behaviors among Military Personnel (Bray et al., 1995) reported the prevalence of overweight based on calculations of BMI from self-reported height and weight (Table 4-2) and on the definition of overweight used in Healthy People 2000 (DHHS, 1991), which is a BMI greater than or equal to 25.7 for women under age 20 and a BMI
TABLE 4-2 Prevalence of Overweight among Active-Duty Personnel, by Age and Gender
NOTE: Table entries are percentages of personnel meeting criteria for being overweight (with standard errors in parentheses). Overweight was defined in terms of body mass index (BMI), where BMI = (weight in kilograms) ÷ (height in meters).2 Estimates have not been adjusted for sociodemographic differences among services. +, low precision. DoD, Department of Defense.
* Defined as being overweight if BMI > 25.8 for men under age 20 or BMI > 27.8 for men aged 20 or older.
† Defined as being overweight if BMI > 25.7 for women under age 20 or BMI > 27.3 for women aged 20 or older.
SOURCE: Survey of Health-Related Behaviors among Military Personnel (Bray et al., 1995).
