According to the National Center for Health Statistics, about 43 percent of women and 38 percent of men 60 and older are obese.

 However, some evidence suggests that in older people, defining overweight and obesity is tricky, and a few extra pounds may be healthy.

 “It’s kind of a controversial area in terms of where the cutoff points for overweight and obesity should be in older adults,” says Denise Houston, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor of internal medicine at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

 Here's the lowdown on weight as we age. 

 Weighty IssuesThere’s no doubt that being too heavy is harmful to health. “In the older pop­ulation, carrying too much extra weight makes many chronic conditions worse, including heart and liver disease, osteo­arthritis, and sleep apnea,” says Alexis Eastman, M.D., medical director for the division of geriatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

 And the higher your weight, the greater the risk of concerns such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
 But the way overweight is typically measured—BMI, or body mass index—may not be the best indicator of health risks in older people.

 A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, while a BMI of 30 or higher is obese. However, BMI can be misleading.

 “BMI is correlated with how much fat a person has, but it’s an imperfect measure,” Houston says. For example, it doesn’t account for related factors, such as muscle mass, where fat is located, gender, ethnicity—or age.
 Houston says that an older adult perhaps shouldn’t be considered overweight unless BMI is 27 or 28. In fact, a 2014 analysis of 32 studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the lowest mortality risk for people ages 65 and older was seen in those with a BMI of 27 to 27.9.

 Other studies have had similar findings. A 2017 research review published in the journal Medicine found that obese older adults had a 6 percent decreased risk of dying early from any cause. And a 2015 study of more than 19,000 nursing home patients, published in Obesity Reviews, also linked overweight and obesity to a longer life.

Extra weight may help protect against illness or falls, or sustain an individual during hospitalizations. Being too lean may decrease your physiologic reserve, Eastman says. “If something happens, like you get pneumonia or fracture a hip, you don’t have as much energy stores to draw on, so you get depleted and can’t recover,” she says.

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