Research

Adherence

Specific WHtR cut-points (0.53 for men, 0.54 for women for whole-body obesity; 0.59 for visceral obesity) provide a high probability (>=0.75) of identifying individuals with high fat mass or visceral adipose tissue as measured by DXA.

Use these specific numbers to gauge your risk. If your waist-to-height ratio is 0.53 or higher (men) or 0.54 or higher (women), you likely have excess total body fat. If it is 0.59 or higher, you likely have high visceral fat, which is linked to metabolic disease. These thresholds are more accurate than BMI for identifying who needs to take action.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
The individual cut-point for WHtR associated with a probability of being obese... of >=0.75 was 0.53 in men and 0.54 in women... The individual cut-point for WHtR associated with a probability >=0.75 of being in the highest third for VAT mass... was 0.59 in both men and women.
Michelle Swainson et al. · PLoS ONE · 2017

Why this rating

Derived from a small sample (n=81) with a predominantly Caucasian demographic; requires replication.

Source

Prediction of whole-body fat percentage and visceral adipose tissue mass from five anthropometric variables

Michelle Swainson et al. · PLoS ONE · 2017

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0177175

cross_sectional · n=81Cited 340×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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