Research
Energy balance
For a given waist circumference, a higher BMI is associated with lower mortality risk, likely due to greater protective subcutaneous fat storage in the lower body.
If you have a large waist, having a higher BMI might be less risky than having a low BMI with the same large waist. This is because lower-body fat may protect your organs from harmful visceral fat.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
when BMI and waist circumference are considered as continuous variables in the same risk prediction model, risk prediction by waist circumference improves, whereas the association between BMI and adverse health risk is weakened... for a given waist circumference, the higher the BMI the lower the adverse health risk.
Why this rating
Based on observational cohort studies and meta-analyses.
Source
Waist circumference as a vital sign in clinical practice: a Consensus Statement from the IAS and ICCR Working Group on Visceral Obesity
Robert Ross et al. · Nature Reviews Endocrinology · 2020
DOI 10.1038/s41574-019-0310-7
clinical_guidelineCited 1,857×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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