need advice

Question
QUESTION: I'm going to give you my issue/question and info about me, hoping lots that you can help me out!!  I'm 30, watching my cholesterol as it tends to be high and HDL is low.  I'm 5'3 and have always weighed about 113.  I've never had a waist, but rather have a body figure that has no cuves, just a straight box.  My stomach I've always thought, is big for the rest of my petite body, which always bugs me!!  My main issue however, is that I know we're supposed to stay below .8 in the hip/waist ratio, and I'm always slightly above, as you can imagine with a body tat has no waist/hips/curves.  My waist is 27 and hips 33.  So that puts my risk factors up.  I don't know if I should try and lose weight to get waist lower so that my ratio becomes better, but my husband says I'm skinny enough and doesn't want to see my face/body get any thinner.  But having this risk factor for heart disease, bugs.  Any thoughts, ideas?

ANSWER: Hi Andrea,

Happy to see someone so health-conscious and doing well! You are at a very healthy weight for your height. The new guidelines for a healthy figure are to have your waist measurement (taken around the top of your hipbones, to center just above your belly button in the front) less than 35 inches for women and less than 40 inches for men. You are doing just fine in that department!
http://www.win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/tools.htm#circumf

If you aren't exercising regularly, this will help increase your HDL in many cases.

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QUESTION: thanks for your positivity.  Yes I exercise regularly.  Just one more thing.  Glad to hear that I'm doing well, but do I not need to worry so much about that below .8 for hipo/waist ratio?  And are there people like me who really have no waist?  I believe truly that even if I were to become super skinny, I'd still not get tht "caved in" waist.  Just a body type thing, no?

Answer
Yes, people have very different figures, and there are many women who are not as curvy as others. The waist/hip ratio was designed to make a point for people who have a lot of weight around their abdomen--not so much about having a small waist, but about not having a huge amount of weight on their midsection.
At your weight and waist size, you are not putting yourself at risk for chronic diseases, regardless of the difference between your waist and hip measurement! If you were like many women who were 30 or 40 pounds overweight, you might deposit much more weight on  your hips than on your mid-section and then you'd see a better waist/hip ratio because your hips would have more fat on them---not something you want to do on purpose, because that doesn't really help anything!
Relax and enjoy having the athletic and healthy body you work so hard to keep :)

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