A better measure of health, better than fat percentage or weight or BMI is your hip to waist ratio. It compares the size of your waist to your hip, the hip ideally being much larger. With weight or BMI, large athletic people always come out looking overweight. And thin people looking healthy. That is not always the case. Someone let's say who has a 1 to 1 hip to waist ratio, meaning the size of their waist is the same as their hip. Making their body look basically like a box. Whether they are large or thin, they are still a box, and not very athletic. A powerful person has a very pulled in waist and a larger hips.
Now if my waist-line is larger than my hip-line, that is even a bigger sign of poor health. Now I am starting to look dysfunctional and inverted. This is regardless of weight, someone thin could also have a waist line larger than their hip. A common misconception that thinness means small waist, not so. If my waist is now larger than the most powerful part of my body, I am not weighed down, inefficient, and most likely will be sluggish. I will always feel like a small person carrying a big box. Instead of an athlete who's body feels like a small box being carried by a large person with powerful legs.
Another common misconception is that, the larger you are, the more curvy you are. She's got curves, or a bigger women have curves, or real women have curves, as the saying goes. But in actuality, if you are larger and your waist is the same as your hip, you are by definition lacking any curves. You are a large box. It becomes more of a masculine bulky guy build. The inverse then, a thin girl with the same waist to hip has the body of a small boy.
Ideally for women, they want a waist to hip ratio of 70% to be considered athletic. For a man a ratio of 80%. Meaning their waist is 70 or 80 percent the size of their hip.
About the Author:
Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.
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nice post but i would like to ask if BMI is a better tool to analyze obesity or Waist hip ratio?
ReplyDeleteProbably body fat is the best way to analyze obesity because the definition of obesity is based on excess body fat leading to adverse health affects. Waist to hip is great to calculate athleticism and can also discover body fat when the waist is bigger than the hips, but BMI doesn't indicate anything regarding fat. It does though give a good idea about structural stress and load on the heart to the amount of mass to height.
ReplyDeleteI can understand Waist-Hip Ratio standard for health reasons but it is not accurate in measuring women’s curvature attractiveness to men. Why do you measure around the buttocks? Aren’t hips and buttocks two different things? I think some sort of Vernier Caliper should be used to measure from side to side instead of including the butt. That way you get a true and consistent hip size instead of all these different sized women with the same WHR. You can’t see hips from the side like you can the butt. Sophia Loren has hips; Kenya Moore has a big butt. Racquel Welch as hips; Buffy the Body has a big butt; Tyra Banks (now that she filled out) has hips; Bo Derek, with her narrow hips and flat butt, has a small curvature because of her even smaller waist. Anna Nicole with the same WHR as Kate Moss…give me a break!!! Kate looks like a man next to Anna.
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