Your waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is your waist circumference divided by your hip circumference, and the only equipment it needs is a soft tape measure, so it is a genuine home measurement. It describes where your body stores fat rather than how much you carry: a high ratio means the weight sits around the abdomen, a low one around the hips and thighs.
That distinction matters: fat around the abdomen sits alongside the liver, pancreas and intestines, and behaves differently from fat under the skin of the hips. The hard part is not the arithmetic but the tape — a couple of centimeters in the wrong place changes the answer.
What you need
- A flexible, non-stretching tape measure — fabric or fiberglass, not a builder’s tape.
- Bare skin, or one thin layer of clothing; belts, waistbands and bulky fabric distort both readings.
- A mirror or a second person, to check the tape is horizontal all the way around.
- Your sex, because the reference cut-offs differ for men and women.
- Your height and weight, optional but useful, so the same session also gives you a waist-to-height ratio.
How the measurement works
Stand upright, feet together, arms relaxed, weight even on both feet. Take each reading at the end of a gentle breath out, without pulling your stomach in.
For the waist, the World Health Organization protocol uses the midpoint between the lowest palpable rib and the top of the hip bone (the iliac crest), usually a little above the navel. Other protocols measure at the navel, or just above the iliac crest, and do not give the same number — so choose one and keep using it. For the hips, measure around the widest part of the buttocks, tape level to the floor.
Keep the tape snug without compressing the skin. Take each measurement twice and average the two; if they disagree, measure again. Then divide waist by hips. Both are lengths, so the units cancel: inches give the same ratio as centimeters.
The WHR (waist-to-hip ratio) calculator does that division, applies the WHO cut-off for your sex and names the pattern of fat distribution — android (“apple”) when the ratio is high, gynoid (“pear”) when it is low. A larger waist pushes the ratio up; larger hips pull it down.
How to read the result
The output is a plain number with no units. The WHO treats it as a marker of abdominal obesity above sex-specific thresholds:
| Sex | WHO cut-off for abdominal obesity |
|---|---|
| Men | 0.90 or above |
| Women | 0.85 or above |
Below those values the risk from fat distribution is considered lower, but the cut-offs are lines drawn across a continuous gradient: 0.89 is not safe and 0.91 is not a diagnosis. They also derive largely from populations of European descent, and several health bodies use lower abdominal thresholds for people of South Asian, Chinese and Japanese ancestry. Your own trend, measured the same way each time, tells you more than one value read against a table — and for tracking change many clinicians prefer the Waist-to-height ratio (WtHR), because it moves when the abdomen moves.
What it does not tell you
WHR describes shape, not tissue. A tape cannot separate visceral fat around the organs from the subcutaneous layer under the skin, and the waist reading also includes abdominal muscle and gut contents. The hip reading is not fat alone either: it reflects gluteal muscle and the width of the pelvis, so two people with identical waists can have different ratios for reasons unrelated to fat.
It is a poor tracker of change, too. When people lose weight, waist and hips usually shrink together, so the ratio can barely move while the abdomen has visibly shrunk; waist circumference alone responds more honestly. It says nothing about total body fat, muscle mass or fitness either, which is why it was proposed as a companion to Body Mass Index (BMI), not a replacement.
The thresholds are not validated in pregnancy, in children, or in people whose landmarks are altered by abdominal surgery, a hernia or fluid retention. And a ratio is a risk marker, not a diagnosis: it does not measure your blood pressure, glucose, lipids or liver fat, does not explain why the fat is where it is, and does not tell you what to change.
Related reading
Disclaimer. This article is for information only and does not replace medical advice. Talk to a qualified clinician before changing anything about your health.