New Horizon Fitness
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Personal Training - for living!
Live a healthier, longer life!
KILLER STOMACHS
A. Central Obesity. AKA beer belly, potbelly, spare tire, muffin top, or dunlap.
B. Deceased. AKA belly up, DOA, worm food, or room temperature.
Just in case you have missed the connection, the strongest predictor of heart attack or stroke is not your overall weight or even the often used Body Mass Index (BMI). Based upon numerous studies covering thousands of people, the size of your waist relative to your hips, the Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) is the biggest predictor of heart disease and stroke.
The WHR is your waist circumference at or just above the belly button, divided by your hip circumference at their widest point of measurement. For men a ratio > .95 indicates high risk, women >.85. This cardiovascular disease risk is independent and more predictive than other factors such as cholesterol levels, hypertension, and even smoking. Just looking at waist size, a measurement of more than 47/40 inches, man/woman doubles your risk of premature death from all causes.
Abdominal fat is in a pouch (omentum) around your middle underneath the stomach muscles. Unlike subcutaneous fat deposits, abdominal fat is very bio-active in negative ways. It contributes to liver dysfunction, elevated LDL, insulin resistance, diabetes, and inflammation.
How do you improve this ratio? For starters, you can not spot reduce belly fat or any other fat, so forget the gimmicks. Just dieting will reduce fat overall, but can decrease important muscle mass. Diet combined with aerobic exercise, is better, but I have seen many a aerobic exerciser consistently carrying a load of dangerous fat around their middle. Diet, aerobic exercise AND weight training is the only way to favorably improve body composition, the overall ratio of lean mass to fat. You may never get your "washboard" abs back, but you can dump the killer fat cells.
Maintain the muscle, lose the fat. This improves the WHR and body composition overall. Done right, many other cardiovascular risk factors will be reduced as well. However, short term gimmick diets without exercise will worsen the condition by training your body to add and conserve MORE fat on the rebound.
B. Deceased. AKA belly up, DOA, worm food, or room temperature.
Just in case you have missed the connection, the strongest predictor of heart attack or stroke is not your overall weight or even the often used Body Mass Index (BMI). Based upon numerous studies covering thousands of people, the size of your waist relative to your hips, the Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) is the biggest predictor of heart disease and stroke.
The WHR is your waist circumference at or just above the belly button, divided by your hip circumference at their widest point of measurement. For men a ratio > .95 indicates high risk, women >.85. This cardiovascular disease risk is independent and more predictive than other factors such as cholesterol levels, hypertension, and even smoking. Just looking at waist size, a measurement of more than 47/40 inches, man/woman doubles your risk of premature death from all causes.
Abdominal fat is in a pouch (omentum) around your middle underneath the stomach muscles. Unlike subcutaneous fat deposits, abdominal fat is very bio-active in negative ways. It contributes to liver dysfunction, elevated LDL, insulin resistance, diabetes, and inflammation.
How do you improve this ratio? For starters, you can not spot reduce belly fat or any other fat, so forget the gimmicks. Just dieting will reduce fat overall, but can decrease important muscle mass. Diet combined with aerobic exercise, is better, but I have seen many a aerobic exerciser consistently carrying a load of dangerous fat around their middle. Diet, aerobic exercise AND weight training is the only way to favorably improve body composition, the overall ratio of lean mass to fat. You may never get your "washboard" abs back, but you can dump the killer fat cells.
Maintain the muscle, lose the fat. This improves the WHR and body composition overall. Done right, many other cardiovascular risk factors will be reduced as well. However, short term gimmick diets without exercise will worsen the condition by training your body to add and conserve MORE fat on the rebound.
Thin People Beware - While the profile above is what is most associated with central obesity, you can have a lot less obvious fat and still be in trouble. There are people with a thin to normal BMI with a dangerous amount of abdominal fat. Due to genetics, diet, lifestyle (smoking, stress, etc.) or disease they do not have the protruding belly. However, over time, all sedentary people lose more muscle mass that is replaced by fat. Your overall weight can stay the same and obscure the deadly build up of abdominal obesity. Only a careful analysis of your body composition can tell if you are at risk.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:
Imperial College London. "Large Waist Can Almost Double Your Risk Of Premature Death, Says Europe-wide Study." ScienceDaily. 13 November 2008.
Roizen Michael, Mehmet Oz. You on a Diet, The Owner's Manual for Waist Management. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Welborn Timothy, et al. "Waist–hip ratio is the dominant risk factor predicting cardiovascular death in Australia". MJA 2003; 179:580-585.
Yusf Salim, et al. "Obesity and the risk of myocardial infarction in 27,000 participants from 52 countries: a case-control study". Lancet 2005;366: 1640-49.
Roizen Michael, Mehmet Oz. You on a Diet, The Owner's Manual for Waist Management. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Welborn Timothy, et al. "Waist–hip ratio is the dominant risk factor predicting cardiovascular death in Australia". MJA 2003; 179:580-585.
Yusf Salim, et al. "Obesity and the risk of myocardial infarction in 27,000 participants from 52 countries: a case-control study". Lancet 2005;366: 1640-49.
