Weight gain
increase in a person's total body mass
Weight gain is an increase in body weight. This can involve an increase in muscle mass, fat deposits, excess fluids such as water or other factors. Weight gain can be a symptom of a serious medical condition.
Description
Weight gain occurs when more energy (as calories from food and beverage consumption) is gained than the energy expended by life activities, including normal physiological processes and physical exercise.
If enough weight is gained due to increased body fat deposits, one may become overweight or obese, generally defined as having more body fat (adipose tissue) than is considered good for health. The Body Mass Index (BMI) measures body weight in proportion to height and defines optimal, insufficient, and excessive weight based on the ratio.
Having excess adipose tissue (fat) is a common condition, especially where food supplies are plentiful and lifestyles are sedentary. Being overweight or having obesity may increase the risk of several diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers, and may lead to short- and long-term health problems during pregnancy. Rates of obesity worldwide tripled from 1975 to 2016 to involve some 1.8 billion people and 39% of the world adult population.
A commonly asserted "rule" (the Wishnofsky Rule, a.k.a.
“Weight gain” enters the record as increase in a person's total body mass. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Weight, gain and increase can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Weight gain” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Weight, gain and increase provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3403879. The Library of Congress control number is sh96006716. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1975 and 2016.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Weight gain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.