Modern Metabolic Health with Dr. Lindsay Ogle, MD
Join Dr. Lindsay Ogle, a board certified family medicine and obesity medicine physician, as she explores evidence-based strategies and practical tips to prevent and treat weight and metabolic conditions. Dr. Ogle provides insights on managing diabetes, PCOS, metabolic syndrome, obesity and related conditions through lifestyle optimization, safe medications and personalized care.
Modern Metabolic Health with Dr. Lindsay Ogle, MD
Beyond BMI: How is Obesity Defined?
We break down what obesity means in clinical terms and how to measure risk with more clarity. We compare BMI, waist circumference, body fat percentage, and the Edmonton Obesity Staging System to show how each tool informs smarter care.
• BMI strengths for population screening
• BMI limits for individuals and for women
• Waist circumference thresholds and why visceral fat matters
• Clothing fit as a practical proxy for central adiposity
• Body fat percentage cutoffs and testing methods
• Edmonton Obesity Staging System from stage 0 to 4
• How staging guides prevention, treatment, and goals
• Early action to reduce medications and avoid complications
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✨Freebies✨
Anti-Obesity Medication Options
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Welcome to the Modern Metabolic Health Podcast with your host, Dr. Lindsay Ogle, Board Certified Family Medicine and Obesity Medicine Physician. Here we learn how we can treat and prevent modern metabolic conditions such as diabetes, PCOS, fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, sleep apnea, and more. We focus on optimizing lifestyle while utilizing safe and effective medical treatment. Please remember that while I am a physician, I am not your physician. Everything discussed here is provided as general medical knowledge and not direct medical advice. Please talk to your doctor about what is best for you. We hear this term all the time, but we rarely talk about the definition. So there are a couple of different ways that we can measure if somebody has obesity or not. The most common way that we classify somebody as having obesity is with the BMI. And there are benefits and negatives to the BMI. What is BMI? It is body mass index. And this is taking somebody's height and their weight and using an equation to create a relative number that we can compare to other people of different heights. And it's important to know that this calculation was created using only men. And so it left out our women, and so that is a huge limitation in what this means for our female patients. But if you want to calculate your BMI, a link will be included below, and so you can type in your height and your weight, and you can find your BMI and find out which category you fit into. And the benefits of BMI are that it is inexpensive to calculate, it's very easy to calculate, and we can easily watch it over time. And it's really helpful for general populations and getting information on a large group of people. It is less helpful for the one person in front of you. It does not tell you what is making up your weight. Do you have dense bones? Do you have a lot of muscle? Do you have excess fat? We don't know what the weight is with the BMI. So a very muscular, like football player or professional basketball player, they could have a BMI technically in the obese category, but we know that these are very healthy individuals. Compared to maybe somebody who does not typically exercise, they actually may have a quote unquote thin body, but may be carrying more fat mass than muscle mass, and may have a normal BMI, but may not be as metabolically healthy as that athlete that I mentioned earlier. Normal BMI is considered 18.5 to 24.9. Overweight is 25 to 29.9, and obese is 30 or above. Other ways that we can categorize or quantify obesity is using the waist circumference. And waist circumference is also very inexpensive to calculate and easy to replicate. And this is something that an individual or a provider can monitor over time. Fat that is in those areas is less likely to cause disease in somebody. Another way that you can kind of do this is watching how your clothes fit over time. So are your pants tight? Um, are they loose? Are you needing to change your pant size? This is a proxy for your waist circumference. So for men, a waist circumference of 40 or greater is considered obese. And for women, a waist circumference of 35 or higher is considered obese. And we are talking about inches here. The most precise way to measure obesity is body fat percentage. And the reason that this may be the most precise is that for obesity, it's less the fact that somebody weighs more than what is considered a healthy weight for them. What's really a cause for concern or caution when it comes to somebody's health is how much excess adipose tissue or fat tissue that they have. Again, predominantly we are concerned about that excess of fat tissue in the abdomen or around our organs. And so if we know what percentage body fat somebody has, it doesn't necessarily matter if their BMI falls in the obese range if they have low body fat. For men, a body fat percentage of 25 or greater is considered obese, and for women, a cutoff is 32% or greater. There are many ways to calculate your body fat, and there are varying degrees of how accurate these tests are. There are calipers, there are electrical impedance devices, there's DEXA scans, and there are even higher tech, more precise ways of measuring body fat that are really mostly used for research purposes. I also want to talk about something that you probably haven't heard before. It's the Edmonton Obesity Staging System. Attributes a stage 0 through 4 to kind of stage how excess weight or obesity is impacting their health. This is really helpful information to have because not everybody that has excess weight or has obesity has medical conditions. They might not be impacted by it, and that's okay. They can be healthy at that size. But if you do have obesity and you have complications, it's good to know how severe they are, and that's where the Edmonton staging system comes in. And so, stage zero, you don't have any complications from your excess weight. Stage one, you're starting to have some symptoms, but they're not really impacting you on a regular basis. So you may have a little bit of knee pain here and there, your blood sugar might be a little bit elevated, your cholesterol might be a little bit elevated, you have borderline high blood pressure, but you're not needing medications. It's just something that we're starting to take notice of. Stage two is when you have a diagnosis of a weight-related condition. So you have that diagnosis of diabetes, you have high blood pressure, you have high cholesterol, you are starting to need medication for man. Stage three is when the medical conditions are becoming more significant. You're needing multiple medications to manage your weight-related conditions. You're impacted on your day-to-day life, you're having limitations in the things that you can do. Your knee pain is so significant that you're not able to go on your walks like you like to. You may have had to have a hospitalization because of your diabetes or your heart disease. It's getting more significant at this point. And then stage four is end-stage disease. This is when your medical conditions that are related to your weight have gotten to the point where they are not managed and they are not reversible. So we're trying to catch people at the earliest stages so that we can manage and treat and reverse their conditions by treating their weight as the primary underlying or one of the most significant attributing factors. And so again, the Edmonton staging system for obesity goes from stage zero where you don't have any conditions or symptoms yet. Stage one, starting to have some evidence of a condition developing, but you're not really having any symptoms on your day-to-day. Stage two, you have a diagnosis of a condition, you have diabetes, hypertension, you're starting to need medication. Stage three is becoming more significant, impacting your day-to-day. You're having multiple medications, possibly a hospitalization. And stage four, irreversible conditions, really significant impact, limiting what you can do on a more significant scale. So I hope this was helpful and I look forward to talking more about obesity and how it impacts health and what we can do to treat it and manage it and prevent it. If you don't already follow me on Instagram, I post there multiple times per week and I would love to have you follow me. So check out that link below as well. And I will see you all next Monday. Have a great week. Thank you for listening and learning how you can improve your metabolic health in this modern world. If you found this information helpful, please share with a friend, family member, or colleague. We need to do all we can to combat the dangerous misinformation that is out there. Please subscribe and write a review. This will help others find the podcast so they may also improve their metabolic health. I look forward to our conversation next week.