Hello and welcome to Get FitFit Guy. This is Kevin Donn.

Welcome back to regular listeners and welcome to new listeners. If you are new here, no need

to adjust your sound. I am Scottish. Now, this week I'm going to address something that I hear from time to time, and that is that body mass index BMI is a myth, and if you're muscular, play sports, it doesn't really apply to you.

I've heard in the past powerlifters, rugby players and even judo players talking about how being bigger is just part of the game.

Sometimes I feel like, no, you're just not a rugby player.

You know, you're just too lazy to do cardio.

So is there a relationship between BMI and your health?

What about other factors like waist circumference? So sit back, relax and enjoy

as I take as deep a dive into the subject as 10 minutes will allow, which isn't really very deep at all.

So first things first is let's break down what waist circumference and BMI actually mean.

So waist circumference measures the distance around your waist and it should be taken just above your belly button.

And it's a powerful but pretty simple indicator of visceral fat levels, which is the fat that builds up in your abdomen around your

organs. It's been linked to various health risks like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

So larger waste usually means that you've got excess fat inside around the organs and even in the

organs. And if this happens in the liver, for example,

then fat and blood sugar levels rise. This is the cause of increased risks of metabolic diseases.

So what would we consider to be a large waist size? Well, according to the British Heart Foundation, then for men, a low risk weight circumference

would be anything below 37 inches and for women below 31.5 inches.

However, it should be noted that for men of African Caribbean, South Asian, Chinese and Japanese

origin, then the waist circumference would actually come down to 35.4 inches to be low risk.

And for women in both categories, 31 and a half.

So the ethnic differences here are because in those latter groups, men seem to carry more

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