Waist Girth as a Surrogate for Body Composition in the Non-exercise Model for Estimating VO2max

Abstract

0604 Jackson, et al demonstrated the significant role of body composition and self-report activity habit (AH) in VO2max by developing two non-exercise models from age, gender AH, %Fat (R = 0.81, SE = 5.35 ml/kg/min) and BMI (R = 0.78, SE = 5.70 ml/kg/min) (Med Sci Sports Exerc 1990;22;863–870). These models were more accurate than sub-maximal treadmill models, but measurement of %Fat and BMI were often found to be cumbersome and inappropriate in the public setting. Like %Fat and BMI, waist girths (WG) are significantly related to fitness, disease and mortality. PURPOSE: to investigate the use of WG as a body composition surrogate for estimating VO2max. METHODS: 2926 subjects (17% women) were measured for VO2max by indirect calorimetry (RER> = 1.1), age (yrs), gender by M = 1, W = 0, AH by the 11 point self-report NASA scale, WG at the umbilicus, %Fat by skin-folds, BMI by weight kg/height m2. Data were randomly divided into validation (N = 2187) and cross-validation (N = 637) samples. The validaiton sample was used to develop three non-exercise models from age, gender AH and either WG, %Fat or BMI. RESULTS: Multiple regression correlations and SE's in ml/kg/min for the models were WG (R = 0.81; SE = 4.77), %Fat (R = 0.81; SE = 4.70), BMI (R = 0.79; SE = 4.99). The PRESS technique was used to cross-validate with no loss of accuracy. An analysis of sub-samples of the validation sample showed the accuracy of the models did not differ across genders and all ranges of age, AH and VO2max. CONCLUSIONS: Comparisons confirmed WG can be used to estimate VO2max with equal or better accuracy than using %Fat or BMI.