Our eligibility criteria are a BMI of 25 and above alongside a related health condition. If you are already taking a GLP-1 medication, that range may not apply to you. Those criteria decide who we can start a conversation with — they are not a prescribing rule, and meeting them is not the same as being suitable for treatment, which is a clinical decision a doctor makes at the consultation. This article sets out our criteria, the three published BMI scales they sit alongside, and what a BMI figure can and cannot tell anyone.
Eligible and suitable: eligibility is whether your situation fits what a service is set up to help with. Suitability is whether a specific medicine is safe and appropriate for you. The first is a criterion on a page. The second is a clinical judgement, and only a doctor who has assessed you can make it.
Our criteria, stated plainly
BMI 25 or above alongside a related health condition. Use the eligibility check to tell us about your health conditions. Dr Quek confirms whether treatment is suitable at the consultation; the questionnaire does not make that clinical decision.
Already taking a GLP-1 medication? Then that range may not apply to you, and suitability is decided by the doctor at the consultation.
BMI is also one of four criteria we publish, and the only numeric one. The other three are about fit rather than measurement: that diet and exercise have been tried and have not held, that you want the process medically supervised, and that you care about losing the right weight and protecting your muscle rather than about the number on the scale. The BMI figure opens the conversation. The rest of it is the conversation.
Three published BMI scales, doing three different jobs
Singapore runs more than one BMI scale at the same time, all of them correct, and confusing them is the commonest error in this area.
Singapore's national obesity classification applies to the whole local adult population. It sets overweight at a BMI of 23.0 and obesity at 27.5, alongside waist-circumference action points above 90 cm in men and 80 cm in women (HPB-MOH 2016). This is a population classification, not a treatment threshold.
The registered product information is the document that governs the medicine itself. For the registered semaglutide product, the weight-management indication begins at a BMI of 30 and above, or 27 to under 30 in the presence of at least one weight-related comorbidity (NDF). Those are the international cut-offs. They have not been adjusted for Asian bodies, and they sit above Singapore's own national classification — which means a Singaporean can be classified obese under the national scale while sitting below the label's threshold for an uncomplicated prescription. Worth noting on the same page: tirzepatide's current registrations carry a weight-management indication with the same BMI thresholds, while the 2023 injection registration SIN16718P carries type 2 diabetes only (NDF).
MOH's primary-care protocol is a third document again, written for doctors in primary care. It sets medication indications at a BMI of 30 and above, or 27.5 to 29.9 among Asians with co-morbidities or complications of obesity (MOH protocol).
Our criteria are a fourth thing, and they answer a fourth question: who this service is set up for. They are not a claim about any of the documents above, and they do not change what any of those documents say.
What "a related health condition" means
The registered product information gives the list, and it is short.
For the weight-management indication, it names dysglycaemia — prediabetes or type 2 diabetes — along with hypertension, dyslipidaemia, obstructive sleep apnoea and cardiovascular disease as examples of a weight-related comorbidity (NDF). MOH's primary-care protocol works from a similar set, adding fatty liver, polycystic ovarian syndrome and metabolic syndrome (MOH protocol).
One boundary matters more than the rest of this section. Type 2 diabetes appearing on that list makes it a qualifying condition for weight management. It does not make weight management a treatment for it. GetLean is a weight-management service; we do not treat diabetes, and anyone with it should have it managed by their own doctor. The same applies to blood pressure, lipids and sleep apnoea. Being eligible on account of a condition and being treated for that condition are different things, and the difference is not a technicality.
Which conditions you have, and whether they are relevant here, is established during the consultation rather than from a form. The screening that rules people out — contraindications, other medicines, personal and family history — is covered in who should not take GLP-1 medication.
What losing weight actually does to each of those conditions, and what it does not do, is set out in weight-related conditions, which covers sleep apnoea, blood pressure, fatty liver and prediabetes one at a time.
Why Singapore's numbers are lower than the international ones
Because the research was done here, and it found that the same BMI means something different in this population.
Using a four-compartment reference model in 291 Singaporean Chinese, Malay and Indian adults, a prediction equation derived from Caucasian populations under-predicted body-fat percentage by 2.7 to 5.6 percentage points, with the size of the gap varying by ethnicity (Deurenberg-Yap 2000). A later DXA study of 537 Singaporean adults found the same direction: body-fat percentage higher than the same BMI, age and sex would predict in Caucasian reference populations (Chen 2021).
A WHO expert consultation reviewing the Asian data concluded that risk rises below the standard international overweight threshold, and proposed additional public-health action points including 23.0 and 27.5 kg/m² (WHO 2004). Singapore adopted the relevant ones. The full evidence, including what WHO did and did not change, is set out in why Asian BMI thresholds are lower.
What a BMI figure cannot see
Everything this clinic exists to look at, which is why the number decides who gets a conversation and not much else.
BMI is weight divided by height squared. It cannot distinguish muscle from fat, it says nothing about where fat is carried, and it is a population screening tool being used on one person. Two people at a BMI of 28 can have materially different amounts of lean tissue and materially different risk, and the ratio reports them identically.
There is also no official number to swap it for. Neither HPB nor MOH publishes a body-fat-percentage threshold, and a 2021 Singapore study reports the same absence of a consensus or Asian-specific cut-off (Chen 2021). Any body-fat percentage presented as a Singapore standard is not one.
What does add information cheaply is waist. Singapore's guideline sets action points above 90 cm in men and 80 cm in women (HPB-MOH 2016), and across 78 studies in 14 countries a waist-to-height boundary of about 0.5 — keeping your waist under half your height — discriminated cardiometabolic risk better than BMI or waist alone (Browning 2010). Neither is a diagnosis. Both are worth measuring, and we cover them in waist-to-height ratio and body fat percentage vs BMI vs weight.
None of that undoes the criteria. An imperfect screening number is still how we decide who to talk to, and the alternative — no threshold at all — would serve nobody well. The point is what happens next: the number gets you the assessment, and the assessment is where composition, history and everything BMI cannot see actually get looked at.
If you are already taking a GLP-1 medication
The BMI range may not apply to you, and the reason is that you are asking a different question.
Someone already on the medication is not asking whether to start. They are asking about dose, about muscle, about how long to stay on it and how to come off it — and a threshold designed to screen new starters answers none of that. So the range may not apply, and suitability is decided by the doctor at the consultation.
We are deliberately not more specific than that here. Where the line sits for a patient already on treatment is a clinical judgement made case by case, and publishing a second number would misrepresent how the decision is actually made.
What meeting the criteria does and does not mean
It means we can assess you. It does not mean a prescription.
GLP-1 medicines are prescription-only in Singapore and may only be dispensed by a registered doctor or a licensed retail pharmacy against a valid prescription (MOH 2024). The doctor decides whether the medication is appropriate after assessing you, and that decision takes account of a great deal that no criterion on a web page can capture.
If the doctor is not satisfied it is suitable straight away, that is a normal step rather than a verdict on you. It often means some further checks at a physical clinic are worth doing first, so that treatment can begin safely — and it does not mean GLP-1 medication is off the table.
Nor does eligibility say anything about how much weight anyone loses. Individual results vary, they are not guaranteed, and what a person is left holding at the end depends far more on protein, training and the plan around the medicine than on which side of a threshold they started.
At GetLean, our philosophy is that the medication is the catalyst and what you keep is the result. The BMI criteria decide who we can have the conversation with. The conversation decides everything after that.
Individual circumstances vary, and whether treatment is appropriate for you is a decision for a doctor who has assessed you.
The registered product information referred to above is quoted in full, per product, in what the registered weight-management label says — including where its BMI floor sits relative to ours.
Common questions
Am I eligible for GLP-1 treatment at GetLean?
Our criteria are a BMI of 25 and above alongside a related health condition. If you are already taking a GLP-1 medication, that range may not apply to you. Meeting the criteria starts a consultation; whether treatment is suitable is a clinical decision the doctor makes there.
Why is there more than one BMI threshold?
Because different documents are answering different questions. Singapore's national obesity guideline classifies overweight from 23 and obesity from 27.5 (HPB-MOH 2016); the registered product information sets the weight-management indication at BMI ≥30, or ≥27 with a weight-related condition (NDF); and MOH's primary-care protocol sets medication indications at ≥30, or 27.5–29.9 with comorbidity (MOH protocol).
What counts as a related health condition?
The registered product information names dysglycaemia, meaning prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, along with hypertension, dyslipidaemia, obstructive sleep apnoea and cardiovascular disease as weight-related comorbidities (NDF). Which of them applies to you, and whether it is relevant, is established at the consultation rather than on a form.
I am already taking a GLP-1 medication. Does the BMI range still apply?
It may not. If you are already on a GLP-1 medication, that range may not apply to you, and suitability is decided by the doctor at the consultation rather than by the number.
Does meeting the BMI criteria mean I will be prescribed the medication?
No. GLP-1 medicines are prescription-only in Singapore and may only be dispensed against a valid prescription from a registered doctor (MOH 2024). Our criteria decide who we can have the conversation with. The conversation decides the rest.