Objective: To update existing knowledge of anthropometry used in the diagnosis of obesity in Cuba and the world. Material and methods: Literature and document review during March 2010 and January 2012. The databases searched were Medline and Cochrane through PubMed. We used the following key words: anthropometry, obesity, adults. Results and discussion: The evidence shows that existing anthropometric indicators are not entirely effective in diagnosing obesity in primary health care, some of their applicability and other hard not to respect the latter concept of obesity issued by the World Health Organization inaccuracy or evaluative. Conclusions: Despite the wide variety of existing anthropometric indicators to diagnose obesity in adults all have their difficulties in application and generalization. Besides that most of these are not adapted and validated for specific populations.