Research Article Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity among Libyan Men and Women H. Lemamsha, 1 G. Randhawa , 2 and C. Papadopoulos 2 1 Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Omar Al-Mukhtar, Al-Bayda Campus, Labraq Road, Al-Bayda B1L12, Libya 2 Institute for Health Research, University of Bedfordshire, Putteridge Bury Campus, Hitchin Road, Luton LU2 8LE, UK Correspondence should be addressed to G. Randhawa; gurch.randhawa@beds.ac.uk Received 17 April 2019; Revised 10 June 2019; Accepted 17 June 2019; Published 15 July 2019 Academic Editor: Luenda Charles Copyright © 2019 H. Lemamsha et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Libya is following the trend observed in developing countries of steadily becoming more obese, such that obesity in Libya has reached epidemic proportions in the twenty-frst century. Te prevalence of obesity in Libya has more than doubled in the last three decades, with the numbers of overweight and obese adults being continuing to grow. Terefore, this study aimed to estimate and describe the prevalence of overweight and obesity among Libyan men and women. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to examine the prevalence of overweight and obesity among the Libyan population. A multistage sampling technique was employed to select 401 Libyan adults randomly from the Benghazi electoral register. Qualifed nurses were allocated to take anthropometric measurements (including visceral fat and Body Mass Index (BMI)) from participants using the Segmental Body Composition Analyser and a portable Stadiometer. Te response rate achieved in this cross-sectional study was 78%. Four hundred and one Libyan adult, aged 20-65 years, participated; 253 were female (63%). Te prevalence of obesity, overweight, and normal weight among Libyan adults was 42.4%, 32.9%, and 24.7%, respectively. Te results also revealed that approximately 75.3% of Libyan adults were overweight and obese, and the prevalence of overweight and obesity in women was signifcantly higher than that in men (the prevalence of overweight was 33.2% in women compared to 32.4% in men, while the prevalence of obesity was 47.4% in women compared to 33.8% in men, respectively). Te fndings of this study confrmed that obesity and overweight are the fastest growing issues and have become one of the most serious public health challenges confronting the Libyan authorities. As the obesity epidemic in Libya continues to escalate, with a complete absence of prevention interventions to reduce obesity, more research is desperately needed to follow the trend of gender diference in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among Libyans adults across the Libyan state to improve the efective interventions for preventing obesity. 1. Background Obesity is a leading cause of various noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including life-threatening and nonfatal diseases; obesity also leads to premature death and disability in adulthood [1–3]. According to the WHO (2018) [3], the worldwide obesity prevalence has increased to almost tripled since the year 1975; as a result, approximately more than 1.9 billion adults worldwide were overweight, with over 650 million being clinically obese [3]. Given that obesity is a growing public health concern worldwide [4, 5] that has serious implications on both individuals and societies [6, 7], the World Obesity Day was emerged and launched in Latin America in 1998 [8]. A large body of literature has shown that there is a paucity of studies about the prevalence of obesity in adults in Arab countries in the North African region, particularly Libya [9, 10]. Since the discovery of oil in 1959, Libya has witnessed dramatic social, economic, and political transformations in the past fve decades, including notable shifs in dietary and physical activity patterns [11]. It is likely that obesity has profound consequences for Libyan society as a whole [12]. Consequently, it is important to understand more about the trends in the prevalence of obesity among Libyan adults because of the detrimental efects of obesity on the individual’s physical and mental health and on social and family life, life expectancy, and the fnancial burden it places on the state. Hindawi BioMed Research International Volume 2019, Article ID 8531360, 16 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/8531360