Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Waist to Hip Ratio Versus BMI

Studies are increasingly finding that the waist to hip ratio may be more relevant to determining if you are relatively healthy even if overweight than the BMI (body mass index) ratio.

Someone who is extremely fit will have much more muscle on their bodies than someone who is very sedentary. And muscles weigh four times as much as the equivalent space taken up by fat. So a very fit person who lifts weights may be considered obese by BMI standards though they are in fact not even overweight let alone obese. BMI is not the best indicator of knowing if your fat ratio is compromising your health.

The waist-to-hip ratio on the other hand has been shown to be a very good indicator of a person's risk of developing heart disease and getting a heart attack.

See more about this at The Fanatic Cook

No comments:

Post a Comment