Bulging stomachs rather than sagging buttocks or chubby thighs, are a bigger indicator of the threat which excessive fat poses to your health, according to medics.
Research to be unveiled today shows that where fat is accumulated is as crucial to an individual's health as to how heavy that person is. "Pear-shaped" people - who accumulate the fat around their buttocks and thighs - are generally regarded as less likely to suffer health problems as a result of the fat, according to the research, while "apple-shaped" people - who have expanded waistlines - face increased health risks.
Fat which accumulates to create beer bellies stores the fat around internal organs, and is more likely to mobilise into the blood stream and raise cholesterol levels.
Fat around the buttocks and thighs is stored between the skin and the body wall and so is less harmful.
"Apples" are more prone to heart disease, strokes, diabetes and some cancers, and are likely to die earlier than "pears', according to the former scientific director of the British Nutrition Foundation, Dr Margaret Ashwell.
She has devised a chart highlighting the importance of body shape as well as weight. This will be presented to a Royal Society of Medicine conference today.
Her findings are supported by the medical director of the Irish Heart Foundation, Dr Vincent Maher, who says fat deposits around the stomach contribute to the development of insulin-resistance syndrome.
This resulted in the body having greater difficulty removing glucose from the blood, and abnormalities in blood fat and blood clotting.
"As a result there is an extremely high chance you will go on to develop high blood pressure and heart disease," Dr Maher says.
Dr Ashwell believes the new chart will provide a better health risk indicator than the body mass index (BMI) traditionally used to assess if people were overweight.
This is measured by dividing the patient's weight by their height in square metres. Using the BMI method, 21 per cent of British women are deemed to be overweight, compared to 17 per cent of men.
However, by comparing waistlines and height, many women believed to be overweight will be found to be merely shapely, while many pot-bellied men will be identified as having a health-threatening problem.
"The proportion of men at risk using the waist circumference to height is greater than the proportion of women at risk, reflecting the greater propensity for men to store visceral fat," Dr Ashwell says.
While the BMI method is use ful for monitoring the risks of body fat alone, it is not a good proxy measure of its distribution, she says.
Studies had shown that the waist circumference to height and waist circumference measurements were better predictors of cardiovascular deaths and all-cause mortality.
Dr Ashwell believes the findings could have implications for public health campaigns and women's attitudes towards their bodies.
Women who see themselves as overweight on the BMI chart should now understand that it is perfectly normal for women to be pear-shaped. "The third millennium must be the ideal time to suggest that we should be `leaping into shape'," she says. "Who knows, this could lead to the prioritisation of resources for the treatment and prevention of excess fat deposition for the `apples', and a relaxation of concerns about the health risks of `pears'.
"Perhaps, at long last, we can convince people that going `pearshaped' is sometimes good news?"