The prevalence of overweight and obesity was assessed during a community based epidemiological survey on a randomized sample of 1700 (900 urban and 800 rural) adult Punjabi females in the age group from 20-45 years. For the assessment of overweight and obesity, height and weight measurements were taken on each subject. The prevalence rate of malnutrition was calculated according to the critical limits of body mass index (BMI). The observations show that the combined overall prevalence rate of overweight/obesity in the present study is 43.88% and 22.26%, respectively, for urban and rural females. The fre-quency of overweight and obesity is more among urban females than in their rural female counterparts.