The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 309. How to Test Your Waist-to-Height Ratio

Starting point is 00:00:00 There's a new term taking over the internet, and it's called skinny fat. In research, this has a name, normal weight obesity, a BMI that would still sail through any physical, sitting on top of a body fat percentage that wouldn't. And here's the number I want you to hear. 26% of the men and 38% of the women had excess body fat. More than a third of women who have never once been told they had a weight problem. The thresholds are above 25% body fat in men and above 35% in women. Which brings me to the part nobody wants to hear.

Starting point is 00:00:28 You cannot detect this yourself, not with the two instruments you're using right now. The scale can't see it, it has one number, and the number can't tell you what the pounds are made of. Two people, same height, same weight, same age. One is fine, one is in trouble, and the scale reports them as identical. Skinny fat is not a body you're stuck with. It's a measurement you have never taken. So here's what I want you to track instead. Four things.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Three of them are nearly free. Number one, I read a thread this week where a kid asked a simple question, Should I eat more or should I eat less? Three people answered him. The first one said bulk. The second one said cut. The third one told him if he cuts, he'll turn into a 50-pound skeleton. So now he's afraid to eat, and he's afraid not to eat.

Starting point is 00:01:21 And he doesn't either. I'm biohacker and human biologist Gary Brecker, and you're listening to the Ultimate Human Podcasts where we dig into the real science behind longevity and disease prevention. There's a new term taking over the internet, built around the body they're running from, and it's called skinny fat.

Starting point is 00:01:36 So here's why I'm doing this episode. That world is wrong about almost every fix, but they're not wrong about something that's there. They found something real and then buried it under the worst advice on the internet. In research, this has a name, normal weight obesity, a BMI that would still sail through any physical sitting on top of a body fat percentage that wouldn't. And here's the number I want you to hear, because this is not a niche problem for teenagers on a forum. A 2023 analysis and frontiers of nutrition took adults with completely normal BMI and actually scanned them.

Starting point is 00:02:06 They did not use a bathroom scale. 26% of the men and 38% of the women had excess body fat, more than a third of women who have never once been told they had a weight problem. The thresholds are above 25% body fat in men and above 35% in women. And I'll be honest, the published cutoffs vary quite a bit, because this is a young field, but the direction is not in dispute. Which brings me to the part nobody wants to hear. You cannot detect this yourself, not with the two instruments you're using right now.

Starting point is 00:02:35 The scale can't see it. It has one number, and the number can't tell you what the pounds are made of. Two people, same height, same weight, same age. One is fine. One is in trouble. And the scale reports them as identical. And the mirror is even worse because your eyes are not a reliable testing instrument. So here's what I want you to track instead. Four things. Three of them are nearly free. Waste to height. Measure your waist divided by your height. And you want it under 0.5. Nice. The UK clinical body put 0.6 and above. at your high risk. So keep your waist under half your height. That's the test and you can run it right now with a tape measure. Grip strength, a dinanometer. It costs 30 bucks and 16 in women flags probable sarcopenia under the European consensus criteria. This one matters most because it's the only measurement here that tells you whether you're losing function and the function is the

Starting point is 00:03:27 whole point. Next, triglyceride to HDL. This is already sitting on a blood panel you've had. Divide your triglycerides your HDL and you want that under three. Under two if you're black. If we use this ratio instead of fasting insulin for a simple reason, insulin assays are not standardized between labs. The ratio is. Then there's something that does cost a little bit. It's a Dexas scan. Scan once, you know exactly where you stand. Then follow up every six months, not for the weight, but for the split. Four numbers. That's the whole dashboard and not one of them is a photograph. And if this part interests you, go watch the episode I filmed with Dr. Josh Axe on why your normal blood work is lying to you and what to test for instead. Same problem as this one, one layer deeper. I highly recommend it.

Starting point is 00:04:14 Now, back to the kid from the beginning of the episode asking if he should eat more or eat less. The actual answer has little to do with how much he's eating because the question is wrong. He's asking about weight and his problem is body composition. You can't solve a composition problem by moving weight in either direction. He needs to change what his body is made of while the scale. barely moves at all. So three things will actually get the job done here. Number one, protein. Your goal is is 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of body weight daily spread across your meals. Not all at dinner. 30 to 40 grams per meal prioritizing leucine-rich sources, meat, eggs, dairy. And this is not a rounding

Starting point is 00:04:52 error. A 2016 trial in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition put people in a 40% caloric deficit with real resistance training. The high protein group gain lean muscle mass while losing fat. The low protein group did not. The second, resistance training. Two to three sessions a week, major muscle groups, eight to 12 reps, compound movements, squats, deadlifts, rows, presses. This is a non-negotiable because it's the only input that tells your body which tissue to keep and slow down. Your body composition changes and weight loss should not happen quickly. If you're losing weight, try to keep it under 1% of your body weight per week. In a 2011 trial, athletes cutting at 0.0.0. 7% a week gained a kilogram of lean mass cutting it faster they started to lose it faster is not better

Starting point is 00:05:40 faster is more expensive now what i just walk you through has a name it's called body recomposition and i did a whole episode on it i recommend you check it out here the episode takes a deep dive into these three things including how to prioritize your training so your results actually hold past september instead of falling apart every year and here's why none of this is optional you're already losing muscle about half a percent a year just by being alive, four to five percent a decade, and your strength falls two to five times faster as your mask does.

Starting point is 00:06:11 That's not a consequence of aging. That's a consequence of inputs, changing the input, you change the outcome. The answer is still protein in a barbell. I'm sorry, it's not sexy, and you can certainly add supplements like creatine, which will help, but they cannot replace these habits. That kid, they got three answers from three strangers,

Starting point is 00:06:28 and what he actually needed was just one person who knew the right inputs. So if that's what you're looking for, I want to invite you to join my VIP community. When you join, you'll get access to monthly live Q&A calls with me where you can ask me any question you want instead of posting a photo for strangers to see and hoping for the best. And as always, I'm not a physician. I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So take this to your doctor.

Starting point is 00:06:49 But as we close up here today, remember what those kids on the forum got right and what they got wrong. They were right that the scale can't see them. Wrong that a photograph can. Wrong that a stranger in a comment section can. that the answer is somewhere in the argument between eating more and eating less. Skinny fat is not a body you're stuck with. It's a measurement you have never taken. So take it. Waste under half your height. Squeeze a dynamometer. Eat the protein. Lift the weight.

Starting point is 00:07:16 And that's just science.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 309. How to Test Your Waist-to-Height Ratio

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.