Not only does belly fat look hideous, it is also bad for your health.

A new study found that carrying extra fat around the abdominal area puts people at greater health risk, even for those who have normal body weight.

In a study conducted on over more than 15,000 participants and over the course of 14 years, researchers found that men who maintained normal body mass index (BMI) but had higher hip-to-waist ratio were at greater risk for life threatening diseases than those who had higher BMI scores but had more even distribution of body fat.

"Persons who are overweight or obese based on BMI may have larger amounts of subcutaneous fat in the hips and legs-fat linked to healthier metabolic profiles," the study authors wrote in their paper, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal. They add that this may be the reason why people with higher BMIs have higher survival rates.

The team, led by Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez from the Mayo Clinic, looked into information taken from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey then compared the cardiovascular and total mortality risk for people with various combinations of BMI scores and waist-to-hip ratios.

For instance, men with normal BMI but with central obesity had greater risk for mortality than those with similar BMI but without central obesity. The latter also refers to participants who had more even fat distribution but were classified as overweight or obese based on their BMI.

The researchers then found that men and women with normal-weight central obesity had the worst long-term survival. Men are said to have central obesity if the quotient of their waist and hip ratio is at 0.9 or higher. For women, central obesity occurs with a ratio at 0.85 or higher.

Dr. Leslie Cho, head of preventive cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said that just having a normal BMI score is not enough to ensure that a person is healthy.

This study is a good reminder to the public that belly fat is not only unpleasant to look at but also puts people at risk for conditions like diabetes and heart disease. It is proves that having a normal weight is not the only measure for healthiness.

"Weight is not as important as your level of fitness and where you hold your fat," Cho concluded.