To measure your waist, wrap a tape measure around your midsection halfway between the bottom of your ribcage and the top of your hip bones. To measure your hips, wrap the tape around the widest point of your buttocks. These two numbers can tell you a lot about your health, but only if you measure correctly.
How to Find Your Waist
Your natural waist isn’t where your belt sits or where your pants button. It’s higher than most people expect. Stand upright and find the bottom edge of your last rib by pressing your fingers along your side. Then find the top of your hip bone (the bony ridge you can feel at the top of your pelvis). Your waist measurement point is exactly halfway between those two landmarks. For most people, this falls roughly at or just above the belly button, but using the bone landmarks is more reliable than guessing.
Once you’ve found the spot, wrap the tape measure horizontally around your body at that level. Stand with your feet together, arms relaxed at your sides, and your stomach in its natural position. Don’t suck in. Take the reading at the end of a normal breath out. The tape should sit snug against your skin without pressing into it or compressing the tissue. Record to the nearest tenth of a centimeter, or the nearest quarter inch if you’re using imperial.
How to Find Your Hips
Hip measurement is more intuitive. Stand with your legs together and wrap the tape around the widest part of your lower body, which is typically the point between the top of your thigh bones and the lower edge of your buttocks. You’re looking for the maximum circumference. If you’re not sure you’ve found the widest spot, take readings at a few slightly different heights and use the largest number. Keep the tape level all the way around, parallel to the floor.
Getting an Accurate Reading
Small details make a real difference. Use a flexible, non-stretchy tape measure, the kind used in sewing. Fabric tape measures that have been used for years can stretch and give you inaccurate readings, so replace yours if it’s old. Retractable metal tapes meant for woodworking don’t conform to body curves and shouldn’t be used.
Measure over bare skin or thin, fitted underwear. Bulky clothing adds centimeters you’ll mistakenly count as body size. If you’re measuring yourself, stand in front of a mirror to make sure the tape is level around your back. It’s easy for the tape to ride up or dip down without you realizing, especially behind you where you can’t see.
Posture matters more than people think. Stand naturally and stay still. Don’t twist or turn to look at the tape on your back. Factors like muscle tension, how recently you ate, and even the time of day can shift your measurements slightly. If you’re tracking changes over time, measure at the same time of day under the same conditions. Research confirms that measurement error increases in people with larger body sizes, partly because the bone landmarks are harder to locate by feel. Taking two or three readings and averaging them helps.
What Your Waist Size Tells You
Waist circumference is one of the strongest simple predictors of the fat stored deep around your organs, called visceral fat. Studies show a correlation of roughly 0.81 to 0.89 between waist size and visceral fat levels in adults, depending on sex and ethnicity. That’s a remarkably tight relationship for a measurement you can do at home with a tape measure. Visceral fat is the type most closely linked to heart disease and type 2 diabetes, which is why waist size matters independently of your weight.
The WHO sets a high-risk threshold at greater than 88 cm (about 34.5 inches) for women and greater than 102 cm (about 40 inches) for men. Exceeding these numbers signals increased risk for cardiovascular and metabolic problems regardless of your BMI.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Once you have both measurements, divide your waist number by your hip number. This is your waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and it captures how your body distributes fat. The WHO defines abdominal obesity as a WHR of 0.90 or higher in men and 0.85 or higher in women. A ratio above 1.0 for either sex indicates substantially elevated health risk.
For example, a woman with a 30-inch waist and 40-inch hips has a WHR of 0.75, well within the healthy range. A man with a 38-inch waist and 40-inch hips has a WHR of 0.95, above the threshold for abdominal obesity.
Waist-to-Height Ratio
An even simpler metric uses just your waist and your height. Divide your waist circumference by your height (both in the same units). A ratio of 0.5 or above indicates central obesity, and this cutoff works across sexes, ethnicities, and age groups from children through adults. The practical translation: keep your waist circumference below half your height. If you’re 170 cm tall, aim for a waist under 85 cm. If you’re 5’8″ (68 inches), aim for a waist under 34 inches. This is one of the easiest health screening numbers to remember and apply.