As India prepares a national obesity guideline, physicians are pushing for a broader way to identify metabolic risk—one that looks beyond BMI. At the same time, the country is proving that recognizing obesity as a health problem does not automatically translate into embracing GLP-1 treatment.

India is preparing to establish a new national obesity guideline, and one of the central questions is whether body mass index should continue to carry as much weight as it traditionally has. BMI remains one of the most common tools for classifying overweight and obesity, but critics have long argued that the measure is too blunt because it does not distinguish between fat and muscle and does not show where fat is distributed in the body.

That concern is particularly important in India. Dr. Sandeep Gupta, an obesity specialist writing in The Week, argues that Indians tend to carry more body fat and more visceral fat at a given BMI than many Western populations, which can increase metabolic risk even when a person does not appear severely overweight by conventional standards. India already uses lower BMI action points than many Western countries for that reason.