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Body mass index (BMI) is generally used to classify adiposity. Despite the fact that the consequences of adiposity for chronic health accumulate and manifest over time, most population health research exploring the implications of high BMI measures only its recent intensity. Some studies have used retrospective measures involving maximum weight, and even fewer have used BMI at multiple time points to estimate cumulative exposure to adiposity. The goal of this study was to compare BMI exposure metrics that captured different dimensions of body mass – intensity, history, and duration – in models of health indicators linked with adiposity. We used self-reported BMI of young adults (ages 18 – 33 years, n = 8,608) across 11 waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to evaluate eight BMI exposure metrics: most recent, maximum, mean, and median BMI, proportion of time with overweight …