The number on a scale doesn’t say where the weight actually sits – and that turns out to matter. That’s the idea behind the informal “apple” and “pear” body shapes: the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) compares waist and hip circumference, and a large international study (INTERHEART, 2005), run across 52 countries, found it predicted heart attack risk better than BMI, across every region studied.
The second method is even simpler and needs only a piece of string: keep your waist under half your height. British researcher Margaret Ashwell promoted this rule specifically because it works consistently across children, adults, and different ethnic groups, without the separate charts BMI requires by sex or age.
Neither measure has officially replaced BMI in medical guidelines, but both point at the same idea from a different angle: it’s not just total weight that matters most, it’s where it settles.
Sometimes the simplest health tool really is just a piece of string.
See also:
– Waist-to-Hip Ratio Calculator →
– Waist-to-Height Ratio Calculator →