The prevalence of obesity has been increasing at an alarming rate across all age-groups within the United States. Specifically within the older adult population, the seriousness of this trend is underscored by resulting medical complications, decreased physical function, and impaired quality of life. Diabetes is associated with obesity and further negatively affects functioning and quality of life. Both obesity and diabetes are associated significantly with health behavior and multiple mental health problems, some of which independently increase the risk for obesity and diabetes. This chapter summarizes research on obesity and diabetes among older adults, including the scope of the problem, assessment, and intervention.
OBESITY EPIDEMICObesity, defined as an excess in total body fat, serves as a risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality, making it one of the most important public health epidemics. More specifically, the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (M. D. Jensen et al., 2014) has defined obesity as a body mass index (BMI) of 30-39, and extreme obesity as BMI of greater than 40 for adults (for a discussion of BMI, see discussion in the section Assessment; Kuczmarski, Carroll, Flegal, & Troiano, 1997).Increasing in prevalence over the past three decades, obesity affects more than 35% of people within the United States . According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 35% of adults over the age of 65 years (i.e., approximately 13 million older adults) were obese in 2007(Fakhouri, Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2012. Specifically, 41% of adults between the ages of 65 and 74 years and 28% of adults 75 years and older were considered obese.
