What to measure
Most people only need waist, hips and weight. Add the others if you are training for muscle.
- Waist: at the navel, relaxed. The single most useful measurement for fat loss.
- Hips: the widest point of the buttocks.
- Chest: across the nipples, arms by your sides.
- Upper arm: midway between shoulder and elbow, relaxed.
- Thigh and calf: the widest point, standing with weight on both feet.
- Neck: just below the Adam's apple. Needed for tape-based body fat estimates.
How to measure consistently
Measure once a week, first thing in the morning, after the bathroom and before eating. Use a flexible tape, keep it level and snug without squeezing the skin, and measure each site twice.
Use the same side of the body each time and write the number down straight away. Consistency matters much more than perfect technique.
How to read your results
Look at change over 3-4 weeks, not week to week. Water, food and hormones can move measurements by a centimeter or more from day to day.
Waist going down while weight stays the same usually means you are losing fat and gaining or keeping muscle. That is a good sign, not a stall.
Printable chart or an app?
A paper chart is simple and hard to ignore. An app does the math for you: it charts every measurement, shows change since you started and keeps progress photos next to the numbers. Many people use both, paper next to the tape and an app for the trend.
What is a healthy waist size?
Waist size is one of the best simple markers of health risk, because it reflects fat around your organs. The World Health Organization uses these thresholds for adults of European descent (lower cut-offs are used for South Asian and East Asian adults).
A simpler rule from the UK's NICE guidelines works for everyone: keep your waist to less than half your height. For someone 170 cm tall, that is under 85 cm.
| Increased risk | Substantially increased risk | |
|---|---|---|
| Women | 80 cm (31.5 in) or more | 88 cm (34.6 in) or more |
| Men | 94 cm (37 in) or more | 102 cm (40 in) or more |
Example: 12 weeks of measurements
This example shows why measurements are worth the effort. Between week 4 and week 8 the scale barely moved, but the waist kept coming down. Over 12 weeks: weight down 2.9 kg, waist down 7 cm. Someone watching only the scale would have seen a month of no progress in the middle.
| Week | Weight | Waist | Hips | Thigh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 82.0 kg | 94.0 cm | 104.0 cm | 60.0 cm |
| 4 | 80.6 kg | 91.5 cm | 103.0 cm | 59.0 cm |
| 8 | 80.4 kg | 89.5 cm | 101.5 cm | 58.5 cm |
| 12 | 79.1 kg | 87.0 cm | 100.0 cm | 58.0 cm |