[Excelsior]

(07-26-2011 01:01 AM)basilransom Wrote:  

I crunched the data a few days ago, and American women are more than twice as fat as American men. I define fatness as number of inches in waist circumference away from ideal, ideal being 32" for men, 24" for women. By ideal, I mean an obtainable ideal for the typical man and woman. The age group is 20-29. Link

Edit: These calculations were with the median, not the mean.

Men: 90.9 cm = 35.8 inches waist circumference
Women: 84.3 cm = 33.2 inches waist circumference

Men: 35.8-32 = 3.8
Women: 33.2-24=9.2
9.2/3.8= 2.42, or 142% fatter. If you say 25" is ideal for women, on average, it's 8.2/3.8 = 2.16, or 116% fatter.

BMI understates the fatness of women. Plenty a man can be 23, 25, 27 BMI and still look good, and perhaps not even be remotely fat. For a girl that does not weight train or seriously play sports, weight north of 22 BMI is fat, pure and simple. And even waist circumference probably understates female corpulence. Men store fat more around their bellies, and women around their thighs and arms.

Yes, well stated.

It is true that women have far less wiggle room with BMI than men, so that measure can be quite misleading. Men, thanks to testosterone, can accumulate extra muscle mass, which of course is heavier than fat. This can lead to "obesity". Any man who lifts regularly or competes athletically can reach obesity easily, and can also be considered quite ideal by women once he gets there(to use NFL examples of this "obesity": Michael Vick, Troy Polamalou, Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Lewis and thousands more). A man with a 29-30 BMI can easily maintain 10% body fat with diet and training.

Women cannot build this muscle mass due to a lack of testosterone, and they also do not lift/compete athletically to quite the same extent that men do. Thus, they tend to be fatter. A 6'0", 215lb man can be very attractive and healthy looking(ex: Michael Vick). A woman that size is almost invariably fat.