To measure your waist, wrap a flexible tape measure around your bare midsection at the narrowest point above your belly button. To measure your hips, wrap the same tape around the widest part of your buttocks. Both measurements take less than a minute, but small details in positioning and technique make the difference between a number you can trust and one that’s off by several centimeters.
What You Need
Use a soft, flexible measuring tape designed for body measurements. The fabric or fiberglass tapes sold in sewing kits work well. Avoid steel construction tapes, which don’t conform to your body’s curves. If your tape is older and well-used, check it against a ruler. Fiberglass tapes can stretch over time if pulled too hard, though higher-quality ones return to their proper length.
If you don’t have a flexible tape, wrap a piece of string or ribbon around your body, mark where it overlaps, then lay it flat against a ruler.
How to Measure Your Waist
Stand barefoot on a flat surface with your feet roughly hip-width apart. Keep your posture relaxed and natural, arms hanging loosely at your sides, eyes looking straight ahead. Don’t suck in your stomach or push it out.
Lift or remove your shirt so the tape sits directly against your skin. Find your natural waistline, which is the narrowest part of your torso, typically about halfway between the bottom of your ribcage and the top of your hip bone. If you press your fingers into your sides and bend slightly, you’ll feel where your torso creases. That’s the spot.
Wrap the tape around your waist at that point, keeping it parallel to the floor all the way around. The tape should be snug enough that it doesn’t slide down, but not tight enough to compress your skin. You should be able to slip a finger underneath. Breathe normally and read the measurement at the end of a gentle exhale, not while holding your breath or forcing air out. Research on measurement timing confirms that normal, relaxed breathing gives the most consistent and reproducible readings.
How to Measure Your Hips
Stand with your feet together or no more than a few inches apart. Look in a mirror or, better yet, have someone help. The correct landmark is the widest point of your buttocks, not your hip bones. Clinical protocols from the NIH specify measuring at “the level of the maximum extension of the buttocks,” which is typically six to eight inches below your natural waistline.
Wrap the tape around your hips at that widest point. Make sure it stays level all the way around, especially in the back where it’s hard to see. The tape should rest flat against your body without digging in. Wear thin clothing or measure against bare skin. Bulky fabrics, pockets, or a phone in your back pocket will throw off the number.
Common Mistakes That Skew Results
Measuring over clothing is the most frequent source of error. Even a single layer of jeans can add one to two centimeters. A tilted tape is the second biggest problem: if the tape dips lower in the back than in the front, your reading will be artificially large. Checking in a mirror or having a partner verify the tape is level solves this.
Pulling the tape too tight compresses soft tissue and gives a falsely small number. Leaving it too loose does the opposite. The right tension is firm contact without any visible indentation of the skin. Take each measurement twice. If the two readings differ by more than a centimeter, do a third and use the average.
Time of day and meals matter more than most people realize. Your waist can measure noticeably larger after a big meal or at the end of the day due to bloating. For consistency, measure in the morning before eating.
What Your Waist Measurement Tells You
Waist circumference is one of the simplest proxies for visceral fat, the metabolically active fat stored around your internal organs. Major health organizations use it as a screening tool for cardiovascular and metabolic risk.
For people of European descent, the commonly used thresholds are:
- Women: above 80 cm (31.5 in) signals elevated risk; above 88 cm (34.6 in) signals high risk
- Men: above 94 cm (37 in) signals elevated risk; above 102 cm (40.2 in) signals high risk
These numbers aren’t universal. The International Diabetes Federation uses lower cutoffs for South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian populations: 90 cm for men and 80 cm for women. Research also shows that the optimal threshold for African American women is roughly 97 cm, about 9 cm higher than the standard 88 cm recommendation, reflecting real biological differences in where and how fat is distributed.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Once you have both measurements, you can calculate your waist-to-hip ratio by dividing your waist number by your hip number. Use the same units for both. If your waist is 76 cm and your hips are 102 cm, your ratio is 0.75.
The World Health Organization considers a ratio at or above 0.90 in men and 0.85 in women to indicate abdominal obesity with significantly increased cardiometabolic risk. A lower ratio generally means your body stores proportionally more fat around your hips and thighs rather than your midsection, which is associated with fewer metabolic complications.
Waist-to-Height Ratio
An even simpler metric is gaining traction among researchers: your waist-to-height ratio. Divide your waist circumference by your height (again, same units for both). The threshold is 0.5, which translates to a straightforward rule: keep your waist circumference below half your height.
A large analysis published in BMJ Open found that this single number identified people at early increased health risk more reliably than combining BMI with waist circumference. The risk tiers break down neatly: below 0.5 means no increased risk, 0.5 to 0.6 means increased risk, and 0.6 or above means very high risk. Because it accounts for body size, this ratio works across different heights without needing separate cutoffs for men and women.
Tracking Changes Over Time
If you’re monitoring your measurements for fitness or health goals, consistency matters more than any single reading. Measure at the same time of day, in the same clothing (or lack of it), using the same tape, at the same landmarks. Write down the numbers or log them in an app so you’re comparing real data rather than memory.
Week-to-week fluctuations of a centimeter or so are normal and reflect hydration, digestion, and hormonal shifts rather than actual changes in body composition. Look at trends over four to six weeks rather than reacting to any single measurement.