How do we feel about waist to hip ratios?

Never seen that calculator before, but I wanted to speak to the rest of what you said. Dropping 32 percent is massive. A stranger on the internet is genuinely impressed—you lost a third of your starting weight in just one year. That is no small thing. Your body is probably hitting natural pauses along the way. Keep going and remember you are doing great work. The best health check for me is whether you are taking good or bad actions for your body right now, and it sounds like you are on the good side.

Man or woman? I am glad mine sits well under a meter around. The one number that caught my attention came from a study of centerfold models showing ratios around 65 to 67 percent.

I do not care about hip-to-waist ratio or similar numbers. Women get judged by these things all the time. Social media pushes one look after another and it is sad. Growing up I was told only rail-thin blondes with big fake chests counted as attractive. Then obesity got pushed as glamorous for a while. Fashion trends are silly enough—wear what you like. The same goes for body shape. You can only shape your body so much. Different people have different builds. When you feel okay you feel okay. If you need a certain look to feel okay, maybe find people who support your own self-worth instead. You dropped a lot of weight and that makes you impressive in my view. I do not need to know your shape. Just be happy with the best version of you.

Honestly the health angle never occurred to me at first. People with big hips and small waists can be healthy or not. The same goes for the opposite build. Now I am curious what the original poster thinks about it.

The calculator does not seem to allow a straight body shape unless you get extremely small to hit 0.80.

That is the standard the military used when I was in. I still go by it.

0.62—what does that even mean? I have only tracked BMI and height-to-waist.

Extra weight around the middle often gets mentioned as a health warning sign. This thread seems to mix health concerns with looks standards. Most of us care about health, yet looks clearly play a role in why people lose weight. On the looks side I think ratios are like ice cream—lots of tastes and I like most of them. I have met women who fit conventional beauty but whose personality made them unappealing, and the reverse is also true. On the health side, certain ratios do point to possible issues. One example comes from a well-known health source that notes rising abdominal obesity raises cardiovascular risk.

At first I aimed to drop 50 or 60 pounds. When I hit that I was still carrying fat, so I switched to five-pound steps. From 200 the next target became 194.5. That got me another 40 pounds down. Five pounds feels doable compared with 200. Small wins add up. Now I do not chase a number at all. I have a target physique in mind and expect it may take a couple of years.

Waist-to-hip ratio feels more like an appearance thing that depends on your natural build. I am a woman with almost no hips and weight tends to settle on my stomach. My ratio does not look especially feminine and does not really show whether I am healthy or not, no matter what the scale says. At my lightest I look like a gymnast. I have a cousin whose BMI puts her near obese, yet her waist stays tiny while her hips and rear are very large.

I get what you are saying, but I would not set fixed timelines or numbers on health that way. My ratio is in the normal range yet my weight, BMI, and body fat are still high, so I am not sure how useful the number really is. Maybe look back at habits from before. After a year, what are you doing now that makes you feel better day to day? What new things improved your overall health? Are you moving more, getting around easier, seeing people more? Do you exercise? Setting strength goals can be useful. Good luck and do not get discouraged. It is a long process.

It is a bit funny that the beauty angle jumped out at me first when I read the opening post. Clearly that was not the intent. So my earlier reply, while true in general, did not really fit this thread.

I try not to focus on waist-to-hip ratio. I am built like a board with curves attached, so there is no real chance for me.

Just wanted to say congrats on losing 32 percent of your body weight. That is a big achievement.

Do not beat yourself up for missing the one-year mark. It took me seven months on one medication and 19 months total to reach my goal. Slow progress adds up. As for ratios and similar measures, I do not care about any of that. I have not even used a tape measure or done scans the whole time. I am thinner than I have ever been and that counts as a win for me.

I think it is a little pointless. I land in the lowest-risk group on that measure, yet I am still obese, so I am not sure it helps much.

I do not know the science, but logically it seems off. It appears to favor women who already have an hourglass shape. We all know extra midsection weight is not healthy, but if I have a large rear and hips to match then I am suddenly healthy? That would make me very healthy.

It is a looks metric, not a health one. You can enter any waist that is at or below 95 percent of your hips and be labeled healthy, even with a 57-inch waist.

I had liposuction around my waist and abdomen last year. About six months later I started the medication. I lost a decent amount of weight overall but the surgically altered waistline makes me look like a woman without clothes on.

The ratio can flag possible health issues, but that is not its only role. Nature uses it to guide attraction and help the species continue. It affects our minds, how pairs form, and partner choice for having children. I located the researcher behind the study I mentioned earlier. It is from a 1995 book by an author I read thirty years ago. It took me a full day to recall the name.