Abstract: Obesity relates to fatal diseases and does harm to human's health. How to accurately reflect the status of obesity or the distribution of adipose tissue has attracted increasing attention of researchers. Due to the high cost of accurate detection of adipose tissue distribution, a variety of new anthropometric indicators have been structured in recent years. However, it is difficult to measure the height of the elderly as natural aging with its population characteristics. This paper summarizes the research progress of obesity related anthropometric indicators and the measurement of obesity in the elderly.