I absolutely HATE my waistline. For one, it’s high, and nowhere near my hips, so I’m hopelessly hourglass-figure challenged. The second reason I hate it is because it’s the first place that reveals when I’ve put on a few pounds.  At my worst, I look like I’m in the running to be the Fruit of the Loom apple who plays the guitar in the back-to-school commercials. (Really God, why couldn’t it be my arse, or my boobs?)

And you know what’s worse? According to experts, the kind of fat that I carry–subcutaneous visceral fat–is the absolute worst kind of fat, because it wraps around vital organs and causes major problems for the heart, pancreas, liver and kidneys. Visceral fat can be linked not only to heart disease, but also cancer, high blood pressure, and stroke.

And it doesn’t take much to put your name on the risk list. If your waistline exceeds 35 inches, you’re at risk for heart disease.

Researchers found that heart patients with a high ratio of waist-to-hip circumference or a large waist size — greater than 35 inches for women, or 40 inches for men — were 70 percent more likely to die during the study period than those with smaller waists. The combination of a large waist and a high BMI upped the risk of death even more.

“What matters probably the most is the distribution of fat, more than anything else,” says the lead researcher, Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D., a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota.
The new study provides more evidence of BMI’s shortcomings in assessing heart risk, says Jean-Pierre Després, Ph.D., the director of research at the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute at Laval University, in Quebec City.
“If you measure body mass index, you don’t assess body shape, you don’t assess body fat distribution,” says Després, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “I’m not saying BMI is useless. It’s just that we need to go beyond that. BMI is the total cholesterol of lipids: We know that there is good and bad cholesterol, and there is good and bad fat.”

SOURCE

So that’s it, ladies–it’s not about your body mass index (BMI), but just how much you carry around your waist that reveals your risk of heart disease. If your waist is more than 35 inches, chances are you need to make some changes.

The good news is that belly fat is it is highly sensitive to diet changes, and you can see improvements pretty quickly with a low carb diet and cutting the sugar.