Content

• Steps
• Advice

Waist circumference is an important number used for many purposes, from choosing clothes to determining whether your weight is healthy. Luckily, the waistline is easy to measure, and you can do it with just a tape measure.

Steps

Method 1 of 2: Take measurements

1. 

   Take off your clothes or pull your shirt up. To get an accurate measurement, you need to make sure the tape measure fits against your bare abdomen, so you should remove all layers of clothing around your waist. Take off your shirt or pull it up to your chest leg. If you get into your pants while measuring, you should also pull them down to your hips.

2. 

   
   
   Find your waist. Use your fingers to find the top of the hips and the end point of the chest. The waist is the tender flesh between these two bones. It will be the narrowest part of the upper body and usually above the navel.

3. 

   Loop the tape around your waist. Stand up straight and breathe normally. Keep the end of the tape at your navel and around your back in front. The gauge should be parallel to the floor and snug around the upper body and not deeply skin.
   • Make sure the tape measure around the right waist is straight, not twisted anywhere, especially behind the back.

4. 

   
   
   Read measurements. Exhale and check the measurement on the tape measure. The waist measurement will appear on the tape measure at the intersection between the zero and the rest of the tape measure. Waist measurements can be in inches and / or cm, depending on the measurement unit on the tape measure you use.

5. 

   Check the measurements again. Take the measurement again to make sure the first reading is correct. If your next measurement doesn't match your first measurement, take a third measurement and take the average of the three measurements. advertisement

Method 2 of 2: Read results

1. 

   
   
   Check to see if your body measurements are at a healthy level. A healthy measurement would be less than 94 cm for men or less than 80 cm for women. Gender-related measurements larger than those above can be an indicator of serious health problems, such as heart disease and stroke. Waist measurements above the upper limit may also indicate a risk of type 2 diabetes and cancer.
   • If your measurements are not within healthy ranges, talk to your doctor.

2. 

   Consider factors that can no longer be useful in a measurement. In some cases, waist measurement is no longer a useful indicator of good health. For example, if you are pregnant or have a condition that causes your abdomen to swell (full or bloated), your waist size may be out of the healthy range, even if you are in good health. Likewise, some ethnic groups tend to have larger waistlines, such as Chinese, Japanese, South Asian, indigenous people or descendants of Torres Strait Islanders.

3. 

   Check your BMI for more information about your weight. If you are not sure if your weight is within a healthy range after measuring your waist, you can calculate your BMI (body mass index). This index takes your height and weight measurements to calculate if you need to lose weight.
   • If your BMI results show that you are overweight or obese, talk to your doctor about options for losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight.
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Advice

• If you want to track changes in body size, you should measure your waist monthly. This can be useful for monitoring your health or any change in body size if you need to tailor clothes for special occasions like weddings, graduation parties or for acting, etc.