Prevalence of Obesity in Young Adults of District Gurdaspur, Punjab

Background: The aim of the present study was to estimate the overweight and obesity among young college going adults using different obesity standards. Materials and method: The study was conducted on 1000 individuals in age range of 16-23 years (mean age: 19.35 ±2.27 yrs.) belonging to urban and rural areas of near and far vicinity attending local educational institutes in the township of Batala in the year 2016-17. The study was carried out on a sample of 1000 students with 606 girls (urban:384 ; rural:222) and 394 boys (urban:229 ; rural:165). The exclusion criteria included chronic or any other infectious ailment. Applying standard methodology of Weiner and Lourie (1981), anthropometric measurements like Height, Weight, Waist Circumference (WC) and Hip Circumference (HC) were taken. Prevalence of overweight and obesity was measured using four criteria - Body Mass Index (BMI), Waist Circumference (WC), Waist-Hip-Ratio (WHR) and Waist-to-Height-Ratio (WHtR). Results: With BMI as a criterion, prevalence of obesity was 21.06% in males and 12.70% in females and it was 10.91% and 4.95% respectively using waist circumference, 13.19% and 21.12% using waist hip ratio and 10.15% and 6.93% with waist to height ratio taken as criteria. Discussion: Sedentary behaviour significantly affected BMI, WC, WHR and WHtR in female subjects while in males WC and WHtRwas observed to get affected. Physical activity affected BMI, WC, WHtR in males while it had no influence in females since the level of physical activity was abysmally low. A good and significant agreement was indicated by Kappa values among BMI, WC and WHtR however, it was moderate with respect to WHR in all age groups as well as on the basis of sex.