What percentage of body fat is considered overweight?

This is a great question, and I noticed that the previous answer said "overweight has nothing to do with the percentage of body fat," and went on to regurgitate all the useless BMI (body mass index) info on the net, which is quite incorrect and indicative of how little understanding there is out there of this topic.

"Overweight" has everything to do with body fat percentage - body fat is the whole reason why the term is used. It certainly has nothing to do with how much bone, muscle, organ, or water weight you are carrying. The BMI formula attempts to estimate your "overweightness," or more accurately, your overfatness, using only your body weight, which is absurd, but it is done because it's easy to measure and collect loads of data on. Ideally, body fat % should be measured instead, but it is a little more difficult to measure accurately without expensive equipment.

The general guidelines are, for men, over 20% body fat is considered overweight, and over 25% body fat for women. Keep in mind these definitions are nebulous though. What is important is the range body fat to strive for to avoid the bulk of the risk factors associated, and of course we all want to look good too. For men, a good healthy range is 8-16% and for women a good range is 14-24%. Incidentally these ranges unfortunately completely fall below what is average for Americans of both sexes.