Anne, measuring the widest part of your hip will give you not just hip but glute muscle. That's why dietitian.com tells you to measure at the hip bone instead. The glutes are some of the biggest muscles in your body so having lots of muscles there is a very GOOD thing.
If you are a pear (by the health definition) it means you carry excess fat over the hip bone, which is not the same thing as having a muscular buttocks, or even muscular thighs. Muscle is good and desirable. The measurement is at the hip bone because you don't have a muscle there, therefore it is measuring just fat. Does that make sense?
As for the waist measurement, Dr Oz (who also tells you to measure high hip bone) tells you to measure right at the belly button AND to suck your belly and pull the tape measure as tight as possible. The goal here is to measure the deep belly fat in the omentum organ - not the jiggly subcutaneous (directly under the skin) fat.
When you measured 1" above your belly button were you getting ribcage in that measurement? If so, try Dr Oz's technique instead. You definitely don't want to measure your rib cage. If you suck it in and pull the tape measurement as tight as possible, I'm betting you can get the measurement down to 26 inches. I know I can.
If I leave it loose (like I would to measure for clothing) it is 28. If I pull as tight as possible (tighter than I'd ever want to wear my clothes!), it gets down to 26. This tells me that most of my belly fat isn't deep belly fat but subcutaneous fat. In fact I also have a lot of leftover loose skin from my babies, which doesn't disappear no matter how in shape I get. However my hip bone measurement is 32, so 26/32 is still 0.81 - an apple ratio.
Sooo... is it realistic? I can tell you that in my 30s I was super-fit, the fittest ever in my entire life. Lifted heavy weights 5x a week, ran daily, competed in half-marathons, etc. I had tons of muscle and low body fat. My waist did get trimmer-looking but at the end of the day I was still borderline apple ratio. It's just how I'm built. But it didn't mean I was unhealthy! I was never healthier in my life.
I have also had my weight down to 97 lbs - all through dieting - and with little muscle. I did not feel good and I was not healthy. You can be too thin and that's also a health problem.
So I would not worry about aiming for some magical waist number. The ratio is only a guideline and it indicates if you may have a tendency towards diabetes or heart disease. If you are a 0.8 ratio now, that doesn't mean you have or are going to develop either disease. What it means is that if you gain a lot of weight eating poorly and are unfit, then you have a higher chance of developing those diseases than someone who would carry the excess weight in their hips.
The reason for that: fat carried in the omentum (deep belly) is closer to your organs. Fat carried on your hips is farther away and so less harmful to your health. Dr Oz describes this very well in his book.
So don't worry about achieving some magical waist number: the reality is it may simply not be possible (either because the build you were born with isn't going to ever be that ratio, or because you have loose skin from the pregnancies... or both, if you are like me). Instead just focus on eating well, keeping weight under control (neither too low or too high) and exercising. Exercising is incredibly important for blood sugar control and heart health. And remember you can weigh more because you have a lot of muscle, and muscle is good.
Example of how this plays out:
- my mom and my sister are both pears. Both of them can carry 20-30 extra lbs and have no serious health consequences, because all the extra lbs are in their lower body.
- my brother is in the overweight BMI category BUT he is not fat. He's quite muscular all over. He is healthy and needn't worry about diabetes or his heart.
- my dad and I are both apples. My dad, who was only ever borderline overweight, developed diabetes and high blood pressure around age 50 and has been on meds for both. He is in his late 60s now and follows a careful diet and gets lots of gentle exercise to keep it under control.
- I was overweight in my 20s and developed gestational diabetes. I got fit after that pregnancy, have maintained my weight more or less ever since. My blood pressure is quite low and my heart is healthy, but I have borderline blood sugar issues. As long as my weight stays within a certain range, the blood sugar keeps under control. Had I not gotten my weight under control when I did, I'm pretty certain I'd have full-blown diabetes by now. I am at high risk for following my dad's pattern if I am not careful.
If you have a family history (everyone on my dad's side of the family has an apple build and developed diabetes by mid-life), then you need to be ultra-careful with your weight, diet, and exercise.
