Health & Diet: Researchers Say Having Normal Weight with Belly Fat More

It’s not entirely clear why packing a spare tire would be more risky than carrying fat throughout the body, but the researchers speculate that it may be because central obesity is associated with the build-up of visceral fat.

Measuring obesity and health risk simply by body mass index, or BMI, limits doctors’ awareness of potential health risks because people with normal BMI may have central obesity and suffer a few of the health effects of it.

To draw its conclusions, researchers gathered a study population of 15,184 adults, ages 18 to 90, who had both their BMI and waist-to-hip ratios calculated, and tracked them for 15 years to see how many died of any cause. “Our research raises the concern that we very well may be missing a large group of children who potentially could be at risk for these diseases as they get older”, Dr. Javed says.

Normal-weight adults who carry fat around their midsections had twice the mortality risk than those who are overweight or obese but have normal fat distribution. More surprisingly, men with normal BMI but high WHR were more likely to have died than women who were overweight and obese, and also had a high WHR.

But none have specifically focused on assessing the death risk in persons with normal BMI and central obesity compared with those who are overweight or obese according to BMI.

In particular, many fear, it is giving false reassurance to many people who are dubbed “normal healthy weight”.

To calculate your waist-to-hip ratio, measure your waist at its narrowest, and then divide that by the measure of your hips at their widest.

No matter what the reason, all of us – whether we are “officially” overweight or not – should probably be taking a closer look at where our fat is distributed on our body by getting a waist-to-hip measurement.

Neides noted that fat around the belly can lead to insulin resistance, which has been found to contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes and other diseases. A person with an “obese” BMI but a healthy WHR is, obviously, just heavy for their height, and there’s a good chance that healthy, lean muscle mass is the culprit. The weight breakdown was: 40 percent normal weight, 35 percent overweight and 25 percent obese. Other factors, not examined in the analysis, might explain the study’s results.

Researchers, led by Dr Francisco Lopez-Jiminez from the Mayo Clinic, said that “spare tyre” obesity was associated with the accumulation of “visceral” fat around internal organs, known to be especially harmful to health.

He told the outlet, “The fat around the belly might look the same under the microscope as fat from the arms or legs, but it’s much more active”. For family physicians like us that care for obese patients, the most heartbreaking stories are from obese patients who can’t go on roller coasters with their children or can’t keep themselves clean due to their size. Women with fat bellies and normal BMI had a 48 percent greater likelihood of death than those with normal BMI and belly size.