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30-second check

Waist-to-Height Checker

One tape measure, one rule: try to keep your waist to less than half your height. It predicts the health risk of central fat better than weight alone, and it takes thirty seconds to check.

Measure against skin at navel height, halfway between the bottom rib and hip bone, after a normal breath out. No pulling the tape tight, no breathing in.

Your ratio

Enter both measurements and choose Check my ratio. Nothing is stored or sent.

Sources

  1. Obesity: identification, assessment and management (updated guidance on waist-to-height ratio) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), 2022Source of the "keep your waist to less than half your height" message and the bands shown.
  2. Waist circumference and waist-hip ratio: report of a WHO expert consultation World Health Organization, 2011

Last reviewed: 2026-07-16

Make it part of the full picture

Waist size is one of the eight factors in the Type 2 Risk Self-Check; two minutes there reads all of them together.

Why the tape beats the scale

Two people with the same weight can carry it completely differently, and for type 2 diabetes the difference is decisive: fat stored around the organs of the abdomen drives insulin resistance far more than fat stored elsewhere. That is what a waist measurement reads and a bathroom scale cannot.

Dividing waist by height corrects for frame size in one step, which is why NICE added the waist-to-height ratio to its national guidance in 2022 with a rule simple enough to remember forever: keep your waist to less than half your height. It costs a tape measure, it works for every height, and unlike many risk numbers it responds visibly to a few months of everyday change.