You might have heard by now about a new, pretty extensive, study that suggests having belly fat is more deadly than general fat all over the body, for impact by obesity. To summarize, forget Body Mass Index (BMI) that is a ratio between your height and weight. Just make sure your waist measurement divided by your hips measurement, is less than 0.9 for men, and less than 0.85 for women who generally have wider hips than men relative to their waists.

Basically, it’s your belly to butt or bum measurement ratio, which is why I’m calling it the Belly Bum Measurement Index or BBMI for short.

It makes sense, this index. Never mind the dense bones skewing things on the BMI, or muscle mass, or fat from things like muscles built during exercise in the past that hang around like on your biceps, or fat from conditions of blood flow or other medical conditions. This gets to the worst fat, which is from what you eat that builds, where, in your stomach!

There are several major problems with diagnosing or surveying this BBMI thing, though. As someone who sews and who has sewn for other people, do you know how hard it is to get an honest waist measurement? You have to not only find the actual waist, but not pull it in a bit consciously, or not. Hips are also problematic for some men with things in front that can get in the way or skew the measurements.

People also don’t know those measurements on themselves either that readily, or that exact. Just cause you might know your pant or skirt waist doesn’t mean that’s the actual size of your waist. It might be skewed by the brand you buy, that skews it on the small side to make it more attractive for you to buy. It is also only an approximation. Nobody sells has a 36.5 waist. That half inch can be the difference if you’re hovering around the critical ratio edge! So how do you think you’ll be able to survey it in a population to get an idea of the nation’s state of health by this BBMI metric?

I’m glad someone has found something better than BMI, though, still. For those serious enough about their health, I think they’ll be critical to get the measurements right. Anybody else who says so but just casually do the measurements just to say they’re on the right side of the ratio? Well, they’re not that serious and would only be cheating themselves.