Obesity is one of the main risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, along with being the important public health problem of Thailand. Health care professionals frequently use body mass index or waist circumference to screen for obesity, but there are more indicators remained: waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio, and the percentage of body fat. Moreover, the range of values of these indicators for identifying obesity are quite different. This article investigated the range of values of these obesity indicators got from the past studies for the researchers to select one that was proper for their study subjects.

Key words: obesity, percentage of body fat, waist, waist-to-height ratio, waist-to-hip ratio