Waist-to-hip ratio as a health marker?

AllCourtTENNIS

AllCourtTENNIS

Explorer
Joined
Dec 23, 2025
Messages
101
Reaction score
1
Location
Virginia
I've just gone past the 1yr mark on peptides without reaching goal. Deliberately, I've been hunting for objective and subjective things about my current shape to celebrate or appreciate, or at least notice, as a way of keeping the 'grief' of missing goal at bay.

Waist to hip ratio surfaced as a health metric I'd heard of but never tracked. Putting my current measurements through this Waist to Hip Calculator gave me nothing to celebrate. The red zone is where I still sit.

So does anyone pick a goal weight using waist to hip ratio? Some of you are quite scholarly. Are there papers or studies out there that back this number up as a useful health indicator, or that undercut it?
 
That calculator is new to me, but I'd rather speak to the other part of your post. A 32% loss is a HUGE accomplishment!! A random internet stranger is bursting with pride for you! that's a full 1/3 of your body weight gone in ONE year.. no small feat!!! I bet there's times your body hits the breaks and asks, WHOA, are you good? Nature built it that way. Keep it up, and carry on toward that goal knowing that YOU ARE DOING GREAT!!! I'll take a look at the calculator..

For me the best health indicator is simply this: are the things you're doing for your health good ones or bad ones? Id say yours are good right now 🙂
 
Male or female?

Personally I'm delighted to measure (well) under a meter around.

The one statistic that caught my attention was the study done on centerfold Playmates, which found a ratio of around 65-67%.
 
I couldn't care less about hip to waste ratio, or any of those other metrics. Wemon get judged on this sort of thing constantly. Social media keeps steering people towards a certian look, and it pathetic. Growing up I was brainwashed into believing that rail skinny blonde's with giant fake tits were whats attractive. At other points obesity was the glamorized body. Cloths going in and out of fashion is silly enough — what you like is what's in style for you. Body shapes going in and out of fashion is a different thing altogether, and it's wrecking people. There's a limit to how much you can control your shape anyway. Everyone's shape is their own. When you feal right you feal right. And if you need to look a particular way in order to feal right, maybe the answer is to surround yourself with people who do more for your self esteem? You've dropped a heap of wieght — that makes you a bad ass in my book. Your shape is none of my business. Just be happy with whatever version of you that you're after.
 
Shittersfull said:

I couldn't care less about hip to waste ratio, or any of those other metrics. Wemon get judged on this sort of thing constantly. Social media keeps steering people towards a certian look, and it pathetic. Growing up I was brainwashed into believing that rail skinny blonde's with giant fake tits were whats attractive. At other points obesity was the glamorized body. Cloths going in and out of fashion is silly enough — what you like is what's in style for you. Body shapes going in and out of fashion is a different thing altogether, and it's wrecking people. There's a limit to how much you can control your shape anyway. Everyone's shape is their own. When you feal right you feal right. And if you need to look a particular way in order to feal right, maybe the answer is to surround yourself with people who do more for your self esteem? You've dropped a heap of wieght — that makes you a bad ass in my book. Your shape is none of my business. Just be happy with whatever version of you that you're after.
Click to expand...
Well, shittersfull ain't full of shit. 100% facts right there, no argument!
 
Shittersfull said:

I couldn't care less about hip to waste ratio, or any of those other metrics. Wemon get judged on this sort of thing constantly. Social media keeps steering people towards a certian look, and it pathetic. Growing up I was brainwashed into believing that rail skinny blonde's with giant fake tits were whats attractive. At other points obesity was the glamorized body. Cloths going in and out of fashion is silly enough — what you like is what's in style for you. Body shapes going in and out of fashion is a different thing altogether, and it's wrecking people. There's a limit to how much you can control your shape anyway. Everyone's shape is their own. When you feal right you feal right. And if you need to look a particular way in order to feal right, maybe the answer is to surround yourself with people who do more for your self esteem? You've dropped a heap of wieght — that makes you a bad ass in my book. Your shape is none of my business. Just be happy with whatever version of you that you're after.
Click to expand...
The calculator, and I'd assume the OP's post too, is about what waist/hip ratio means for health risk, not about chasing some particular shape, look or kardashian booty.
 
Shittersfull said:

I couldn't care less about hip to waste ratio, or any of those other metrics. Wemon get judged on this sort of thing constantly. Social media keeps steering people towards a certian look, and it pathetic. Growing up I was brainwashed into believing that rail skinny blonde's with giant fake tits were whats attractive. At other points obesity was the glamorized body. Cloths going in and out of fashion is silly enough — what you like is what's in style for you. Body shapes going in and out of fashion is a different thing altogether, and it's wrecking people. There's a limit to how much you can control your shape anyway. Everyone's shape is their own. When you feal right you feal right. And if you need to look a particular way in order to feal right, maybe the answer is to surround yourself with people who do more for your self esteem? You've dropped a heap of wieght — that makes you a bad ass in my book. Your shape is none of my business. Just be happy with whatever version of you that you're after.
Click to expand...
I feel like you've put a finger on something I could never properly articulate about why WHR leaves me cold. BMI reads as fairly sexually neutral to me — nothing more is asked of you than "stand there on that square." WHR is a different beast. Health implications aside, and they may well be real, it is ALWAYS served up to women as a fuckability measure, which feels undignified. Measure your body parts, run the maths, discover your fuckability number, ladies! No...no thank you. Being assigned a number for that isn't something I want, I'll just weigh myself.
 
Honestly it never even occurred to me that the hip/waste ratio could have some bearing on health. You get people with big asses and tiny wastes who are healthy, and people with the same proportions who aren't. You also get people with tiny asses and big wastes who are healthy, and vis versa. At this piont I'd like to hear the OP's thoughts on the matter?
 
AllCourtTENNIS said:

I've just gone past the 1yr mark on peptides without reaching goal. Deliberately, I've been hunting for objective and subjective things about my current shape to celebrate or appreciate, or at least notice, as a way of keeping the 'grief' of missing goal at bay.

Waist to hip ratio surfaced as a health metric I'd heard of but never tracked. Putting my current measurements through this Waist to Hip Calculator gave me nothing to celebrate. The red zone is where I still sit.

So does anyone pick a goal weight using waist to hip ratio? Some of you are quite scholarly. Are there papers or studies out there that back this number up as a useful health indicator, or that undercut it?
Click to expand...
Back when I served, that was the measure the US military went by. So I still use it.
 
Shittersfull said:

Honestly it never even occurred to me that the hip/waste ratio could have some bearing on health. You get people with big asses and tiny wastes who are healthy, and people with the same proportions who aren't. You also get people with tiny asses and big wastes who are healthy, and vis versa. At this piont I'd like to hear the OP's thoughts on the matter?
Click to expand...
The year it began I couldn't tell you, but the essentials are:

a ratio above 0.80 in women, or 0.90 in men

raises the risk of stroke, cancer, t2d and heart attack

The figures may be off.

Yesterday I went and found a calculator, but I didn't go looking for any current research. My assumption was that the people here would know more about it than I do. I also wondered whether it could act as a guideline for deciding when to start maintenance. At my height the healthy BMI range spans roughly 40lbs. I had hazy ideas about overlapping healthy BMI and healthy waist/hip on a Venn diagram, which might narrow things down.

I feel a bit daft that the whole Kardashian ass angle never once crossed my mind.
 
Extra weight around the midsection being a sign of poor health is something I have heard often.

There seem to be 2 separate things being discussed in this thread: health, and conventional beauty standards.

Health conscience as most of us here are, there's no denying that beauty standards are a major motivator when it comes to losing weight.

On HWR as a beauty standard, I'd say it's like ice cream — plenty of different flavors, and I love most!

I've known plenty of women who are conventionally beautiful yet thoroughly unattractive once you know their personality; the reverse holds just as true.. Some I've crushed on hard fell well short of traditional standards.

On the health side, certain ratios undoubtedly signal potential problems, and here's an example from Harvard health



f0572b3439fd7acd7e1d9b5b2a844188f7f51cac7090c7b4489aedd26af58182.jpg




Why worry about your waistline? - Harvard Health



Growing numbers of Americans now have abdominal obesity (as measured by a large waist size), which puts them at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease....

2ddf89d0fcfcfc6bb0f2a50cf2578e393723fb51103d46beccbcbc78c4ac2e46.png



www.health.harvard.edu

Excess fat around your midsection is especially dangerous for your heart.​For decades, experts have warned that a big belly is more harmful to your heart than extra padding in your hips and thighs. A growing number of Americans now sport this unhealthy "apple-shaped" profile, according to the latest statistics from the CDC.

The average waist circumference for men is now 40.2 inches, up from the 39 inches recorded in the last survey, which was done in 1999–2000. Women's waist measurements also rose — from an average of 36.3 to 38.6 inches. That means that a majority of Americans now have belly sizes that put them at high risk (see "Gut check: How to measure your midsection").

"As your waistline expands, so does your risk of cardiovascular disease," explains Dr. Osama Hamdy, medical director of the Obesity Clinical Program at Harvard-affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center. Belly fat — what doctors refer to as visceral fat — turns out to be very different from fat that accumulates in the hips and thighs, he explains. But even though some people are predisposed to larger midsections, there's a lot you can do to remedy the problem

Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
At first my target was dropping something like 50-60#. Hitting it didn't leave me lean. So I switched to 5# steps instead. Sitting at 200, my next checkpoint became 194.5. That approach took off another 40 lbs.

Chasing 200 feels enormous. 5 feels doable. Small wins still count.

These days I've stopped chasing a number at all. What I want is a particular physique, and getting there will likely take a few years.
 
The waist to hip number is really an aesthetic measure, and it hinges on how your body is built. I'm a woman with virtually no hips, and my weight all settles on my belly, so my ratio doesn't read as especially womanly and it tells you nothing about whether I'm at a healthy weight — BMI included. At my lightest I had an olympic gymnast's frame. One of my cousins is classed as borderline obese by BMI, yet her waist is very small while her bottom and hips are enormous.
 
I see your point, though I'd rather not attach fixed timetables or scores to health. My HWR sits in the normal range while my weight, body fat and BMI all run high...so I doubt that figure tells us much. Perhaps look instead at what you were doing before GLP? Twelve months on, what has actually made your day-to-day feel better? Which habits did you pick up that left you healthier overall? Do you move more, get around more easily, see people more? Are you training? Aiming at a lifting or workout goal is a solid idea!

Best of luck, and please don't lose heart <3 You're running a marathon here, not a sprint.
 
Reading the opening post, the first thing my brain offered up was a Kardashian-style backside. Funny how that works. Clearly that wasn't the poster's point at all.

So even though my first answer was technically right, it didn't belong in this discussion.
 
professorpeppy said:

0.62... what am I supposed to take from this?!!!

BMI and height to waist ratio are the only ones I've used..
Click to expand...
Over in the armed forces, that number is how they flag you as carrying too much weight.
 
Honestly, I skip thinking about the waist-to-hip thing entirely. My frame is the shape of a 2x4 with a chest glued on...there's no hope for me. 😆
 
AllCourtTENNIS said:

I've just gone past the 1yr mark on peptides without reaching goal. Deliberately, I've been hunting for objective and subjective things about my current shape to celebrate or appreciate, or at least notice, as a way of keeping the 'grief' of missing goal at bay.

Waist to hip ratio surfaced as a health metric I'd heard of but never tracked. Putting my current measurements through this Waist to Hip Calculator gave me nothing to celebrate. The red zone is where I still sit.

So does anyone pick a goal weight using waist to hip ratio? Some of you are quite scholarly. Are there papers or studies out there that back this number up as a useful health indicator, or that undercut it?
Click to expand...
I just want to say well done on that 32 PERCENT drop in bodyweight. That's a huge achievement, and it deserves celebrating rather than glossing over!
 
Back
Top