Body Type: Are You an Apple or a Pear?

Who gives a s**t? It makes no real difference to you.

More crap from ABCNEWS.

"Most women (and men for that matter) understand intuitively whether their bodies tend to store fat around their waists (forming an apple shape) or lower down around their hips, thighs and buttocks (forming a pear shape in women). But few of us understand the dramatic impact body shape has on our current health and risk of future disease.

A number of recent studies have shown that it is your waist size and body shape rather than how much you weigh or tip the scale that best predicts your risk for a number of chronic diseases. For example, a study published in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine found that while only half of the obese patients studied had metabolic abnormalities that placed them at much greater risk of heart disease, a full quarter of the normal weight adults had these same worrisome metabolic risks as well."

Knowing your waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio is no guarantee of "metabolic health."

You still do not know how much of the dreaded visceral fat occupies your innards.

You can be thin-waisted and still have "too much visceral fat," whatever that is and whatever that means (you can bet this theory will change, too).

"Masked obesity: A condition of excess total body fat deposition of individuals,
whose body mass and the BMI are within the “average” or even “underweight”
categories. Individuals with masked obesity are often visually thin and difficult to
detect their obesity from their visual appearance (Kajioka et al. 1996a)."

And, rest assured, that people will cheat on measuring their waists and hips as this silly doc/medical contributor suggests. A scale will be more reliable.

The medical article referred to dealt with "cardiometabolic" matters, whereas BMI is related to those and additional bad illnesses.

Plus, the BMI offers a real road map to sensible weight loss.

If you are overweight/obese, lose the pounds.

And screw the crap from the MSM.