Overweight during adolescence has many psychological consequences and low self·esteem is the immediate detrimental effect observed. Adolescents with low self»esteem are at risk for many emotional and behavioural disorders while high self-esteem adolescents experience an incremental improvement in their quality of life. The objective of this study was to compare seh'-esteem between overweight and non-overweight Malay adolescents in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. A cross-sectional study was conducted between January to ]une 2005 among 1364 students selected from ten co-educational government secondary schools in Kota Bharu using stratified multistage cluster sampling. A set of guided self-administered questionnaire which included a Malaysian version of Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Body Mass Index measurement was used. Data was entered using SPSS 12.0 and analysed using STATA 8. O. The prevalence of overweight among secondary school students in Kota Bharu was 12.5% and there was no significant difference in self-esteem between overweight and non-overweight students. However, the findings may not be generalized to out-of-school youth and other ethnic groups in this country. Infomation on other modifers, such as parental acceptance or lack of concern regarding the child’ obesity was not elicited in this study. It is an important protective factor for self-esteem and need to be included in future studies.