Are you aware of any lit reviews of either indicator in trained populations?
The literature I have seen appears to suggest 37" is a good cutoff for untrained asian males, 40" for white males and about 43" (on limited data, so they are still held to 40" standard) for Pacific Islanders or naturally large-framed individuals.
I am at 42" WC, but my waist to hip ratio is about .97. According to several indicators, I should be at risk, but waist to hip ratio is not terrible and the other indicators don’t seem to do a much better job than BMI for certain populations.
I have also noticed that WC increased by about 1" over 3-6 months as I gained muscle mass, despite my bodyweight remaining constant and bellyfat appearing to decrease.
There must be a better indicator for trained populations or large-framed individuals or a more nuanced approach to the interpretation…?
I know that hip to waist ratio is less sensitive and specific for determining if someone is carrying too much body fat. I’m also not aware of data suggesting that if you are well trained, but overfat, that the amount of trained-ness influences how fat you can be.
If your waist circumference increased, it is highly unlikely that your body fat decreased.
It is possible my measurements from 3-6 months ago were inaccurate. I will stipulate that. (although shouldn’t be wildly inaccurate)
However, the increased size of the muscles, particularly in the lower back does appear ( unquantified, ancetdotal, possibly perception-biased visual assessment of bellyfat dependent observation) to be adding to the waist circumference.
My thoughts are that (much like BMI), despite the large amount of generalized data, the WC indicator is likely somewhat useful, but inferior to some other method of assessment for several specific population groups (Maybe taller, larger hips, muscle mass differences, ethnicities etc.). Or possibly would be best interpreted in one of several contexts. But, like the medical community in general, I do not have a solution or sufficient reliable data to come to a metric or method I would be confident in.
In the absence of better information, it seems I should plan on moving to a sub 40" number over the course of maybe 6 months or so.
It would be highly unlikely for the localized hypertrophy in these areas to occur rapidly enough to skew your measurements, as muscular hypertrophy and LBM increases are rather slow (in general).
That would be incorrect.
Without context, pretty much nothing is meaningful.
That said, BMI and WC are used together and there are different cut off points based on data. Given the previous comparisons to body fat level testing, waist to hip ratio, and other anthropometric data, I don’t think that seeking a new metric or method is necessary at this time.
I would speed up that timeline to maybe 1-2 months.
I also responded to your post in the medical q/a forum. Your posts seem…curious. I am probably just jaded at this point, but we will see.
My skeptical side and intuition say the picture is not complete. But, I have a somewhat dilettante knowledge in public health metrics and their effectiveness. I will trust you on this one.
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I would speed up that timeline to maybe 1-2 months.
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Exactly. That’s what I meant.
That should include about 20lbs weight loss in 1-2 months to get there if I am starting at 6’2" 235lbs? I am pretty certain I am not ethnically Han Chinese. I have a build much more similar to the Mongolians or Pacific Islanders, so I am going for sub 40". Not sub 37".
Yes, it is typically unwise to be skeptical and use intuition if you’re untrained in the subject matter.
I’m not sure, as don’t know you, your background and ethnicity, and if you’re even being honest. That said, considering you’re doing SS for 1 year I know that you are likely to be relatively untrained. I would aim for 37" given your current stats. I would also recommend seeing a psychologist.