Diet & Fitness 
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Body shape and your health

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Unfortunately, there's no magic way to lose abdominal fat other than the tried-and-tested diet and exercise. Keep your eye on the scale, because your goal should be general weight loss, not reduction of certain areas which isn't possible anyway. If you're apple shaped but not at all overweight, which is rare, you probably can't whittle your waist much. Instead, concentrate on eating healthily and exercising to reduce your risk.

For most people, a decrease in total body weight will also result in a decrease in waist-to-hip ratio and waist circumference, and will therefore improve the odds against heart disease.

Divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement to get our waist-to-hip ratio. Studies have shown that women tend to underestimate their hip circumference, so be careful to measure at the widest part of your hips.

If your waist-to-hip ratio is less than 0.72, you are in the most "pear shaped" and least risky category.
If your waist-to-hip ratio is: ... then your risk of a non-fatal heart attack or fatal coronary artery disease is this much higher than the risk faced by the most pear shaped women:
0.72 to 0.75 50 percent higher
0.76 to 0.83 102 percent higher
0.84 to 0.87 128 percent higher
More than 0.88 143 percent higher
These estimates take into account differences in age, height, and weight, smoking and drinking, family history of heart disease, exercise levels, menopausal status and use of hormones, saturated fat intake, aspirin use, antioxidant levels, blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol levels.


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