So if you surfed the internet at all yesterday, you may have come across an article with the title, “A Few Extra Pounds Might Bring Extra Years.” In fact, if you Google that title, you’ll see the article all over the place. Seems to be a hot story.

If you didn’t see the article, Click Here to read it.

I also dug up the abstract of the research.

I worry about articles with titles like that. How many times do we just scan headlines and titles without reading the articles. Millions of people do this. If you’re one of them, you might get the wrong idea that if you weigh more, you’ll live longer. However, the article was quick to point out that the findings do not mean that normal-weight people should try to pack on extra pounds, the researchers said.

Anyway, the gist of the article said that if you were underweight or obese, according to BMI measurements, then you will have a shorter lifespan and that if you are overweight, you will live longer than a normal weight problem. The problem is #1 that there have been other studies stating that if you were overweight, that this could lead to premature death, which is in direct conflict to this study.

And secondly, they used the measurement of BMI, or body mass index, to classify whether a person is underweight, overweight, normal weight or obese. I can’t believe that research which still use BMI as a measurement still exist. BMI is a measure of height to weight and is an inaccurate way of determining whether a person is overweight or not.

Overweight using BMI is defined as someone who has a BMI between 25-30. So a 5′10″ man weighing 181 pounds has a BMI of 26 and is considered overweight. In reality, this person may have lots of lean muscle and have a body fat % of 8 percent. That man is not overweight in reality. This is where the results of any study using BMI can be skewed.

So what is a better measurement? I believe that taking your waist circumference using a tape measure of even finding your waist to hip circumference ratio, again using a tape measure, will give you a better predictor of heart disease, heart attacks and other obesity related ailments. If you’re a woman, the waist-to-hip ratio should come out as no more than 0.8. Men have a little more wiggle room: a healthy waist-to-hip ratio for them is 0.95.

This means, if your belly has bulged out enough to catch up to the size of your hips, you should start worrying about your heart, experts say.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this research article that just came out. Please leave your comments in the comment section.

Have a great day!

Scott Colby