Where is my waist?
The fact that people have become heavier in the past 50 years will come as a surprise to no one.
What is astonishing is where on the body this extra weight is located.
Body measurements are important for clothes manufacturers, in order for them to produce the right cut of clothes that consumers will feel comfortable in, and therefore buy. Surveys on body measurements are expensive because they need a large sample of the population to be representative. 'SizeUK' was a 2004 survey of 11,000 women aged between 16-70 years in different parts of the United Kingdom. The last such extensive survey in the UK was carried out in 1951, and although the measuring methods were far more sophisticated in 2004, the two surveys offer an excellent possibility for a comparison of body shapes.
In the 50 years between the surveys, the average British woman grew by 1.5 in /4 cm in height (and the generation of 25-35 year olds grew by even more - 2.5 inches), added 1.5 in / 4 cm (5%) to her bust and 1.5 in/ 4 cm to her hips (4%). It is the waistline that grew most disproportionately – the average British woman gained 6.5 inches (16cm) around her waist, from 70 cm /27.5 in to 86 cm /34 in - that’s 23%.
Similar results were measured in other countries such as US and India. No more A-line fashion for that type of figure….
What went wrong?
It seems that the lack of movement has to take a large proportion of the blame for the progression of abdominal fat. The manual (mostly household) work of a typical ‘middle class’ female has diminished by 1'000 kcal (4'200 kJ) a day in the past 60 years – equivalent to 2 hours of playing tennis daily. Other factors in the growth of our abdominal fat may lie in the changes to diet: a reduction in fibre intake; a sharp rise in fructose consumption (which is metabolised by the body differently to table sugar); more processed meat; and more cooking at high temperatures (baking, frying and roasting), delivering chemical compounds to the body which may induce the increase of visceral fat.
The waistline is relevant from both a medical and an aesthetic point of view.
Waistline measurements correlate closely with insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease - often closer than the overall weight or BMI. An expanded waistline seems further to be a risk factor for infertility, and even for some cancers. Current medical thinking views a waistline over 80cm/31in as a disease risk.
For women, a ratio of 0.75 waist-to-hip measurements or lower is excellent from a medical point of view.
Aesthetically, research showed that all cultures rate women with certain hip to waist proportions as more attractive, independently of their overall dress size. In studies conducted in New Zealand, a hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 was seen as the most attractive. Other studies, conducted with men from various cultural backgrounds, support the same ratio.
Test your waistline ratio on our Hip/waist ratio calculator.
The good news is that the first fat you lose on a diet is likely to come off your waist.
There are, of course, other reasons for extra inches around the waist apart from visceral fat.
In the past 50 years, there has been a significant shift from natural births to cesarean sections, with the greater associated risks of permanent damage to the stomach muscles. Further, the average woman loses an entire 2 in/5 cm in height between the ages of 40 and 70 – mostly due to changes in her spine (curvature, bone loss and loss of intervertebral disc mass). That means that the same amount of trunk mass needs to be redistributed along a shorter axis, resulting in a wider abdomen. Weight bearing exercise, a diet rich in magnesium, vitamin D and calcium may be helpful to prevent osteoporosis, and so help maintain the waistline.