Finding out if you are morbidly obese may give you the courage you need to take the first step. Below are information and tools you can use to determine if you are morbidly obese and potentially a candidate for weight loss surgery.

There are several medically accepted criteria for defining morbid obesity. You are likely morbidly obese if you are:

• more than 100 lbs. over your ideal body weight, or
• have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 40, or
• have a BMI of over 35 and are experiencing severe negative health effects, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, related to being severely overweight
• unable to achieve a healthy body weight for a sustained period of time, even through medically supervised dieting.

BMI is a measurement of the relative percentages of fat and muscle mass in the human body, in which weight in pounds is divided by height in inches and the result used as an index of obesity. Measure your body mass index with our BMI calculator.