Cut From Steel

He went downstairs backwards and called it old age

William Banting was a London undertaker, born in 1796. By the age of 64 he stood five feet five inches tall and weighed a little over 200 pounds.

Banting wrote down exactly what that cost him, which is why we still have it. He could not stoop far enough to tie his own shoe. Descending a staircase meant going down it backwards to spare his knees.

Banting did not consult anybody about his weight. He went about his hearing, which was failing, and the man he saw was William Harvey, an aural surgeon at the Royal Dispensary for Diseases of the Ear in Soho Square.

Harvey put him on a plan that removed the bread, the butter, the milk, the sugar, the beer and the potatoes. Banting lost roughly a pound a week, and 35 pounds across 38 weeks. His hearing came back with the weight.

In 1863 he published the entire account at his own expense as a pamphlet, Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public. It sold so well that he gave the profits away. For a century afterwards, English speakers asked one another whether they were banting.

Banting was 64 when he started and he lived to 81. His first act was not a diet. It was an honest measurement. Everything that followed was arithmetic on top of it.

Your belt tells the truth your scale is hiding

You weigh roughly what you weighed at 40, give or take a few pounds. Your trousers tell a different story, and you have been buying the next size up without mentioning it to anybody.

I want to give you a test that takes thirty seconds and a piece of string. NICE, the body that sets clinical guidance in England, recommends keeping your waist measurement to less than half your height.

You do not need the bathroom scale for this at all.

It's not age. It's these three.

I will give you three things about that ratio, and one measurement to take before you go to bed.

01 / The Rule Itself

NICE recommends that adults keep their waist to less than half their height, and applies the advice to adults with a BMI below 35. A man of five feet ten is 70 inches tall, so his waist wants to come in under 35 inches. Measure at the navel with the tape flat and level, not along the belt line you have been negotiating with for a decade.

02 / Why The Waist Rather Than The Weight

NICE describes the waist-to-height ratio as a practical estimate of central adiposity, used alongside BMI, for assessing risks such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A number on a scale cannot tell a heavy-legged man from a man carrying all of it out front. The tape measure can, and it costs about a pound.

03 / The Fat You Cannot Pinch

The fat packed around your organs behaves differently from the fat sitting under your skin. Clinical bodies worry about central adiposity for that reason rather than because of how a man looks with his shirt off. Your waist number is a rough proxy for the part you cannot see, which is the part that matters.

Take it back today

I owe you the caveat, and NICE gives it themselves. The ratio sits alongside BMI rather than replacing it, and the advice is not applied to adults with a BMI over 35. This is a screening question, not a diagnosis, and it does not tell you what to do next.

You should also know the thresholds shift by ancestry. NICE advises lower BMI cut-offs for people of South Asian, Chinese, other Asian, Middle Eastern, Black African and African-Caribbean background, because the same numbers carry greater cardiometabolic risk. Ask your doctor which line applies to you rather than assuming the default one does.

I want a number out of you tonight. Measure your height in inches and halve it. Then measure your waist at the navel, standing normally, breathing out but not holding it in. Write both figures on the same line of paper.

You have been reading your own body through a scale that cannot see where the weight is stored. Halve your height and find out whether your waist agrees. It takes thirty seconds and you have the string.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits that bring the tape in:

The reward for measuring honestly is being allowed to want things.

01 / Wheels · Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon

The G-Class has been made since 1979 and started life as a military vehicle, which is why the door still shuts like a bank vault and the shape has barely moved in forty-five years. Three locking differentials mean it will genuinely go where it looks like it will go, which almost none of its rivals can say. It drinks fuel and it does not care. Buy the used one and let somebody else take the first hit.

02 / Denim · Levi's 501 Shrink-to-Fit

The rivet patent dates to 1873 and the 501 is the direct descendant. Shrink-to-fit means you buy them stiff and oversized, wash them once, and end up with a pair cut to you rather than to an average. They cost less than a decent shirt and they look better at three years old than at three weeks. Every man should own one honest pair of jeans.

03 / Glass · Talisker 10

Made on the Isle of Skye, and it tastes like the place... smoke, brine, and a distinct pepper on the finish that catches men out the first time. It sits at the affordable end of serious single malt and outperforms bottles at twice the price. Drink it in October with the door open. It is not a summer whisky.