This One Minute Test Could Save Your Life

Measure your Middle
With an oversize waist, your risk of an early death shoots up--even if you aren’t overweight.
A bulging middle is a signal that you have lots of visceral fat, the thick, yellow fat deep in the abdomen that pumps fatty acids, appetite-stimulating hormones, and inflammation-fueling chemicals into the blood stream.
In a recent study of 360,000 people from nine European countries, big waistlines predicted disaster even for people who weren’t overweight--increasing the risk of premature death 79 percent for women and doubling it for men. A big middle is particularly hard on the heart, tripling the risk for fatal heart disease in a Harvard School of Public Health study of 44,636 women.

Even so, experts say doctors frequently fail to measure the waists of normal-weight patients--which means they’re likely to be missing “ab fat” in these otherwise slender patients.

HOME CHECK Bare your torso and stand in front of the mirror. Circle your waist with a tape measure, then move it down until the bottom of the table rests at the top of your hip bones. This is the position recommended by the National Institutes of Health. Don’t hold your breath or cinch the tape too tight. Write down the number.
YOUR NEXT STEP For men, risk for diabetes and heart disease begins to rise with a reading of 37 inches; a measurement of 40 inches and up is considered high risk. For women, 32 inches is the danger threshold, and 35 inches is high-risk terrain. Best ways to shrink visceral fat? Exercise and a Mediterranean-style diet (plenty of produce, grains, fish, and monounsaturated fat from olive oil and nuts). Because visceral fat is more metabolically active than fat on your hips or elsewhere, its actually apt to come off relatively fast as you start to lose weight.
Reader’s Digest, July 2010, 136