So what is a fat gut?
Use the waist to hip ratio to see if your belly is too big for your body.
The Waist to Hip Ratio Math
Measure your waist
Measure your hips
Divide your waist measurement by your hips measurement
So a waist measurement of 40 inches and a hips measurement of 40 inches = 1.0 (40/40)
Waist 42 and hips 40 = 1.05 (42/40)
What's a good number?
Lower is better. According to the World Health Organization (WHO):
Men should have a waist to hip ratio < 0.95
Women should have a ratio < 0.85
Following are obesity guidelines from AHA
The American Heart Association simply uses waist measurements. They say you're obese if:
You're a man with a waist circumference greater than 40 inches
or a woman with a waist measurement in excess of 35 inches
Waist to hip ratio is probably more telling since it normalizes your belly fat to your inherent body size.
Waist to Height Ratio
Another good predictor of future health problems is having a waist to height (W/H) ratio < 0.5.
So if you're 6 feet tall (72 inches), you're waist should be 36 inches or less.
I prefer the waist to height number over the waist to hip. It correlates really well with future health problems. At least 4 cardiovascular health metrics correlate in a linear fashion with increasing waist to height ratio:
Body Mass Index (BMI)
Total Cholesterol (TC)
Blood Pressure (BP)
Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG)
W/H is also easy to get. You know your height (and it doesn’t change) so you just have to track your waist measurement.
Your Goal
In the beginning, drive to reduce your body fat % (and therefore your belly fat) so your waist to hip ratio is below:
< 0.95 if you're a man
or < 0.85 if you're a woman
And then for an optimum waist circumference, shoot for a waist to height ratio:
<0.5
How To Do It?
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