A Measurement Guide for Women: Why Checking Your Waist Size Is a Great Way to Measure Your Health & Progress
Use this measurement guide for women to find out why checking your waist size is a great way to assess your health progress.
There’s a common misconception that when we step on a bathroom scale, the number we read reflects our health status. The truth is: it might or might not. The little white box on the bathroom floor doesn’t always accurately represent what’s going on inside our body. The reading doesn’t tell us if our body is healthy, and even if the change we are making to our body is helpful or harmful. Plus, most scales don’t tell us what exactly the reason for the weight gain or loss is. More importantly, the scale is no reflection of our character or “goodness.” In fact, we often think the worst about ourselves after we get on the scale and that negative self-talk can do a lot of harm to our emotional well-being and our physical progress. (Learn more about spiritual recovery from negative self-talk in Dear Food, I Love You. I Hate You. Don’t Leave Me! Workbook One.)
As someone who’s struggled with food and obesity in the past, I can tell you that a typical household bathroom scale doesn’t give us enough information about weight losses and gains to merit all the internal torment. If we fixate on the scale number, we may be wasting valuable energy (and tears) on something that isn’t as reliable as we assume.
I’ve learned that taking a waist measurement is simple, more affordable, and can be a more accurate indicator of health. An accurate waist measurement offers valuable insights into body composition and can bring light to potential health risks.
In this waist size measurement guide, I’m going to show you why checking your waist is a great alternative to the scale for assessing your overall health, give you some tips on how to do it, and give you some ideas for next steps. Let’s get started.
Understanding the Limitations of the Scale
Constantly monitoring the scale can make us frustrated and anxious. Focusing on the scale number alone can really impact us psychologically. Here are three reasons the scale can’t be our only source of health data.
Scale Variance: Scale readings vary scale to scale and reading to reading on the same scale. Acceptable variance is generally up to and around 1 pound. This means if you’re weighing yourself twice a day, or even once a week, you may be seeing a result that is due to scale variance not actual weight loss or gain.
Muscle vs. Fat: Scales measure total body weight without differentiating between muscle, fat, bone, water, or extra heavy toenail polish. As a result, the number can be misleading. For example, if you’re on a weight loss journey and exercising more, you’re going to be increasing muscle. Muscle is denser and looks different on your body, so although your weight might increase due to increased muscle, this doesn’t mean you’re gaining fat. Most home scales don’t tell the difference between the fat weight and your muscle weight or how that is affecting the number you’re reading.
Heathy Weight vs. Healthy Person: Many people also believe a lower weight automatically equals better health, but this is not always true. It’s possible to be at a “healthy weight” but have a high percentage of visceral fat, which can increase the risk of health issues like diabetes, heart disease, and complications associated with obesity. The number on the scale is a measurement of weight, not a measurement of health.
Why Waist Measurement is a Good Indicator of Your Health- and How a Simple Tape Measure Can Preserve Your Sanity!
For those who struggle with emotional eating, the scale can open a floodgate of emotional highs and lows that fuel the emotional eating tempest. This is why I’ll often suggest those working my bible-based diet plan Dear Food focus more on reducing their waist measurement over time; instead of focusing on the ups and downs of the scale each day. Also, decreasing waist size can improve your health because you’re decreasing visceral fat stored around internal organs.
Visceral fat (fat stored in the abdominal cavity) is more harmful than subcutaneous fat (fat stored under the skin.) High levels of visceral fat are associated with an increased risk of severe health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. Unlike subcutaneous fat, visceral fat releases inflammatory substances that can disrupt the body’s normal metabolic functions, leading to insulin resistance and other metabolic disorders.
On my weight-loss journey, I found it easier to focus on reducing my waist circumference in addition to, and sometimes instead of, setting weight-loss targets indicated by the bathroom scale. By using waist size as a barometer, I could tailor diet and exercise plans to have better fitting clothes, rather than being a slave to fluxuating numbers on a scale.
Health Benefits of Focusing on Waist Measurement
Measuring your waist comes with a variety of different health benefits such as:
- a better understanding of body composition and fat distribution, which helps you target visceral fat that’s linked to serious health conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.
- a focus shift from a “goal weight” measured by the scale to a healthier lifestyle, measured by fat loss.
- a less stressful approach to measuring progress, thereby lowing cortisol, which is a factor in weight gain and weight retention. Lowering cortisol benefits other parts of your life as well.
How to Measure Your Waist
Here’s a step-by-step guide to measuring your waist:
Step 1 – Find the standard “waist” location used for measuring: Stand up straight and locate the top of your hip bone and the bottom of your ribs. In between is the narrowest part of your torso, typically just above your belly button. This location provides a reliable point of reference for measurement and can easily be found when you measure each time.
Step 2 – Wrap the measuring tape around your waist evenly: Wrap a paper or flexible plastic measuring tape around the waist while keeping the tape parallel to the floor all the way around your body. Sometimes it helps to use a mirror and sometimes it helps to get help from a trusted friend. Having a flat and level tape all the way around your body will insure you are getting an accurate measurement.
Step 3 – Exhale and measure: Take a normal breath and exhale naturally and take the measurement. The tape should rest comfortably against your skin all the way around without compression.
Step 4 – Record the measurement: Take note of the measurement to the nearest millimeter or eighth of an inch. Double check. You can mark the tape measure itself or write down the measurement in a place you’ll find for the next time. Easy peasey; you’ve got your waist measurement.
Need more information on measuring a male or female waist size? Click here.
Be patient with yourself. Losing weight takes time, and there will be setbacks. Be realistic about your strengths and pitfalls and prepare to get back on the horse… health horse that is… quickly. Simply getting back to your healthy living plan as faster than you have in the past is a victory. Don’t beat yourself up, you’re on your way, so keep going!
Practical Tips to Reduce Waist Size
Reduce Your Intake of Junk Food
I get it, there are somethings you just can’t live without. That’s ok. Do your best to reduce your intake of some sugary and processed foods. This will benefit your efforts to decrease your waist size. Feel like you can’t stop eating these foods? Start the Dear Food Program. Dear Food is a Bible-based diet program that can help you stop emotional eating so you can achieve your healthy living and weight loss goals. Not sure if you’re an emotional eater? Get your Free Food/Mood tracker by signing up for the Dear Food Newsletter here.
Get Moving
There are many ways to move your body. You know what you love to do, and you know what you don’t want to do or can’t do. The important thing is to do something that increases daily movement.
- Build your cardiovascular strength by getting in some sweaty movement
- Stretch to maintain flexibility
- Increase muscle tone when and where you can, safely and consistently
- Celebrate the victory of getting out there and moving your body for better health! Yay you!
Don’t Get Hung Up Failure
Failure is a realistic byproduct of trying new things, growth, change and the attempts at healthier living. Accept setbacks as a part of the experience, learn from them and move on quickly. Part of any physical recovery plan is a spiritual recovery plan so your emotions may run high. If you need more encouragement on recovering from failure, check out Dear Food, I Love You. I Hate You Don’t Leave Me! Workbook 3.
Find a Like-Minded Community
Studies show that being in a like-minded community when you have a goal is key to long term success, especially when it comes to more serious and difficult challenges.
Find a community that understands your struggle with food, weight loss and health. Looking for a Christian Weight Loss Program? Learn more about the Dear Food here.
You don’t have to take this journey alone. Join the Dear Food Program today by starting Workbook One and joining the Dear Food weight loss group on Circle. It’s time for you to get your victory.
Written by Julia Fikse FMCHC, NBC-HWC, 2024
Julia Fikse’s book Dear Food, I Love You. I Hate You. Don’t Leave Me! is the best-selling, award-winning Christian weight loss program, and spiritual diet plan designed to help you stop overeating and improve your health. This Bible based diet program is a Bible study with workbooks to use alone or as a Bible study for small groups. Grab your copy today!
Julia Fikse is a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, specializing in Functional Medicine, Emotional Eating and Mental Health and Weight Loss. Julia has personally experienced the frustration of weigh gain, weight loss, weight related health issues and emotional eating challenges and is trained to help you overcome too. Julia is not a therapist or a doctor and this blog should not in any way replace doctors advice.
