The rule of thumb is to keep your waist at less than half your height

According to recent guidelines, people should be encouraged to measure their waists to ensure they don’t have too much harmful fat around their midsection.

To avoid health hazards, an adult’s waist should be less than half their height, according to NICE.

Body mass index (BMI) measurement is also beneficial, although it does not account for excess weight around the belly.

As a result, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and strokes become more likely as a result of this.

People from some Asian and black ethnic groups are more prone to this form of fat build-up around the waist, known as “central adiposity,” according to new draught recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

To help predict their specific health concerns, they should adopt lower BMI limits for obesity.

However, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) warns that even those with a healthy BMI may be carrying too much weight around the waist.

For example, if you’re 175 cm (5 feet 9 inches) tall, your waist measurement should be less than 87.5 cm (34 inches), which is half your height.

It goes on to say that measuring the waist-to-height ratio can be done on both sexes, all ethnic groups, and even exceptionally muscular adults.

Waist circumference measurements, on the other hand, are inaccurate in people with a BMI greater than 35, pregnant women, and children under the age of two.

Professor Naveed Sattar, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, said it’s “uncertain” whether this new message would be adopted, but he added that trying “novel techniques” to urge people to think about their health is never a bad idea.

According to recent NHS data, there was a significant increase in childhood obesity in England during the pandemic, with 25% of children classified as obese by the time they finish primary school.

Even small children, according to Dr. Nivedita Aswani, a consultant paediatrician specialising in diabetes and weight management at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, are vulnerable to the consequences of abdominal fat.