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"Waist Circumference Less Than Half Your Height"
Body mass index is a better predictor of disease than body weight, since it takes height into account.
But it doesn't say what or where that mass is. Body-builders can have huge BMIs,
especially since muscle is heavier than fat. It doesn't mean they're obese.
It's now accepted that health risks can be determined as much by the relative distribution of the
excess fat, as by its total amount. It's not so much body fat, but visceral body fat--abdominal fat--the fat
around our internal organs that MOST increases our risk of dying prematurely. All these women...
have the exact same BMI, but it's the people with this so-called apple shape that tend to live the shortest.
Now waist circumference takes care of both the what and where of the weight, but can also be affected by height.
Enter...the waist to height ratio. Move over BMI...we now we have WHR.
"A systematic review of waist-to-height ratio as a screening tool for the prediction of cardiovascular"
"disease and diabetes...", was recently published--the first of its kind--concluding WHR was superior and the
cut-off should be 1:2...supporting the simple public health message "keep your waist circumference"
"to less than half your height."
It is cheaper, more convenient-- no scale required--and most importantly,
more sensitive as an early warning sign of health risks to come.
Just take a cloth measuring tape and measure halfway between the top of your hip bones and
the bottom of your ribcage. Stand up straight, but breathe deep and exhale,
let it all hang, out and that measurement should be half our height. And if it's not, we should cut down
on our consumption of meat (as we just went over), but also our consumption of refined plant foods...
... whereas as at least 3 servings a day of whole grains was recently associated with a slimmer waist,
in the Framingham Heart Study.