FEMALE BODY TYPES CLASSIFED BY WAIST-TO-HIP AND REGIONAL FAT DISTRIBUTION RATIOS\ud

Body type classification is employed to determine disease risk using measurements such as Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR) and waist circumference. However, these measures classify body types using a priori determined cut-points. The purpose of this investigation was to establish data-based cut-points denoting female body types ranging between android and hyper-gynoid using the WHR and regional body fat distribution-ratio (RFD-ratio). Waist, abdomen, and hip circumference, height, weight, and body fat were obtained for 73 Caucasian females. The waist and hip circumferences were used to determine the WHR classification. The abdomen circumference, height, and BMI were used to develop the RFD-ratio classification. The subjects were 20.93 ± 1.95 years old, weighed 62.31 ± 9.92 kg, and were 163.78 ± 6.70 cm tall. They had a BMI of 23.19 ± 3.21 kg•m-2 and a body fat percentage of 25.85 ± 6.59. A TwoStep cluster analysis was used to determine the number of “naturally” formed body type clusters. The analysis was conducted with no a priori determination of number of clusters to form, where to make the cut-points, or how many subjects to place in each cluster. Within both body type classification systems (ie. WHR and RFD-ratio), three good quality clusters formed. For the WHR system, the cut-point between the hyper-gynoid and gynoid clusters fell at 0.72, while the cut-point between the gynoid and android clusters was 0.78. For the RFD-ratio system, the cut-points were 0.68 and 0.78, respectively. To examine interchangeability between systems, the WHR and RFD-ratio system’s values were compared using a One-Factor ANOVA. Ratios differed (p < 0.01) between systems. This indicated that the two systems could not be used interchangeably despite having a correlation of r = 0.65. It was concluded that both classification systems can be used to determine female body type. Owing to application simplicity, the WHR classification system may be preferable. Further examination of the subjects’ health status as well as testing a larger number of overweight or obese subjects is required to broaden generalizability of the two body type classification systems