Waist circumference range for women?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Jordan, I wondered if you would consider updating the Nutrition Sticky. Under the subtopic “Skinny Fat” you have a range of waist circumference measurements for men for which you recommend weight loss for health reasons. Would you consider adding the equivalent information for women? On google, I can easily find waist not over 40" for men nor over 35" for women, but I had never read the 37-40 inch range for men as indicating elevated risk until I began reading/watching Barbell Medicine and cannot find anything like that for women.

Having it in the sticky would make it easier for women who come to your site to access the info quickly.

Personally, the info would be helpful to me as I am a normal BMI, but with a 37 in waist. To get just to 35 inches I would need to lose about 10% of my body weight. When I was working to lose weight (60 pounds) for health reasons some years ago I stopped based at a BMI of 23-- but with the elevated waist size. I got different opinions from doctors about whether I should keep losing. (Recently, I asked my endocrinologist whom I see for Hashi’s and she encouraged me to lose the waist.) It would have been easier to keep going then rather than to restart a weight loss process , so this time I’d like to get it right the first time.

Thanks for considering this and thank you as always for the vision that you have for bringing together medicine, nutrition, and strength training. I have learned so much.

2

For women, the waist circumferences of 34" and 31" correspond to significantly increased risk and increased risk of adiposity-related disease, respectively.

With respect to weight gain in women, from a health perspective I couldn’t recommend it as an option if they had an adiposity-related disease and/or a waist circumference in excess of 31".

1 Like
3

Thanks, Jordan.

4

Hi Jordan. Just to double check, in your BMI and waist measurement video, regarding the thresholds for significantly increased risk, you mention 40" for males, 37" for asian males, 37" for females and 34" for asian females. Have you re-evaluated these numbers or do the numbers you mention here refer to asian females? If the former, would we take another 3" off the above to get 31" and 28" for asian females?

5

Yea these have been re-evaluated. 34.6" is the threshold for significantly increased risk and 31" for increased risk. The additional 3" no longer is applicable for females as evidence and guidelines have become more clear. .