ABSTRACT

Obesity and overweight were an important public health problem in the world. This study was realized to describe the prevalence of this important problem and the factors affecting this in soldiers. This crosssectional study was carried out among 706 soldiers in a military unit. For body mass index (BMI), 25.00- 29.99 was accepted as overweight and 30.00 and higher was accepted as obesity. In respect of BMI the prevalences of overweight and obesity were found as 19.3% and 2.7% respectively. Of participants 2% have larger waist circumference than 102 cm while 1.1% have higher waist-hip ratio than 1.0. It was found that age, residential unit, education level, and occupation were related with obesity and employment- before military service- and marital statuses were not related with obesity. When the future considered, 19.3% of overweight prevalence and 2.7% of obesity prevalence shows that obesity may become an important problem.