Conscious Curves

by: AndreaDow
Total views: 1062
Word Count: 315

October 29th, 2006

Last week I discussed the importance of knowing how many calories your body needs to consume to lose/maintain weight. Once we have an idea of our total caloric intake, we can also investigate some other important numbers. Something as simple as measuring waist and hip circumference can be a strong predictor of heart disease. A study in the British medical journal, The Lancet, looked at 30,000 people in 52 countries. Waist to hip ratio was found to be more useful than BMI or Body Mass Index. BMI is an equation that uses your height and weight to determine whether you are overweight. The problem with BMI is that it does not differentiate fat versus lean body mass. Using the BMI equation would put most football players and other elite athletes in the obese or even morbidly obese categories.

To find out your ratio, get a cloth or flexible plastic tape measure and take two measurements followed by some basic math:

Measure the distance around your waist- use the narrowest point at the belly.
Measure the distance around your hips- use the widest part of your bottom.
Divide the answer from #1 by the answer from #2.
You can also plug the numbers into the following website:
www.healthcalculators.org/calculators/waist_hip.asp.
*A number greater than 0.85 for women indicates excess abdominal fat and increased health risks.
If you are curious about your BMI, check out:
www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmicalc.htm.
If you want to skip the math altogether, Health Magazine advises that a waist measurement of more than 35 inches indicates a greater risk of high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes which area all risk factor for heart disease.

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