Body Shape Calculator: Find Your Body Shape From Your Bust, Waist and Hips

Your body shape describes how your bust or chest, waist and hips compare with each other. It is a different question from how much you weigh. The World Health Organization notes that fat around the abdomen can vary a lot between people with a similar amount of body fat and a similar body mass index. Shape names such as hourglass and pear come from clothing design, where they guide fit, so the system that researchers treat as the standard comes from apparel research rather than medicine.

This calculator uses the Female Figure Identification Technique (FFIT), developed at North Carolina State University by Simmons, Istook and Devarajan (2004) to sort women's 3D body scans into nine shapes. The FFIT papers describe each shape and the order in which the shape sorting software checks them. The numbers in the rules come from Lee and colleagues (2007), who wrote them out in inches to compare more than 6,300 American women with Korean women, and from a 2020 update by Sokolowski and Bettencourt that sorts bodies with a waist larger than the hips into the oval and diamond shapes. The health check uses the waist to hip cut-offs from the World Health Organization's 2008 expert consultation.

How this body shape calculator works

The FFIT compares measurements by subtracting them. The calculator works out three differences in inches, the unit the rules are written in, plus one optional ratio.

Bust minus hipsBust minus waistHips minus waistOptional: high hip divided by waist

1. Measure. Enter your bust or chest, waist and hips in inches or centimeters. Centimeters are converted to inches before the rules run.
2. Compare. For the default woman, with a 38 inch bust, 28 inch waist and 39 inch hips, the three differences are minus 1, 10 and 11 inches.
3. Match the rules in order. The FFIT software checks hourglass first, then spoon, diamond, bottom hourglass, top hourglass, oval, inverted triangle and triangle, and rectangle last. The first rule that fits is your shape, so a body that fits two rules gets the one checked first.
4. Use the high hip if you have it. Only the spoon and bottom hourglass rules need it. If your result depends on it and you left it blank, the calculator shows both possible shapes and the high hip that would decide between them.
5. Check the health lines. Your waist divided by your hips is compared with the WHO cut-off for your sex. If you enter your height, your waist divided by your height is placed in the NICE bands.

The lines are sharp. A woman with a 36 inch bust, 28 inch waist and 38 inch hips is an hourglass because her hips are exactly 10 inches (25.4 cm) larger than her waist, right on the hourglass line, so a waist half an inch (1.3 cm) larger reads as a rectangle. The calculator tells you when your result sits within half an inch of a line like this, because your next measurement could land on the other side.

How to measure your bust, waist, hips and high hip

Use a soft tape that does not stretch, stand relaxed with your feet close together, and keep the tape level with the floor. The WHO 2008 report sets out the method for the waist and hips. Measure the waist midway between the lowest rib and the top of the hip bone at the end of a normal breath out, and the hips around the widest part of the buttocks. The report also advises taking each measurement twice and averaging the two if they are within 1 cm (0.4 in) of each other, or measuring again if they are not.

• Bust or chest. Around the fullest part, under your arms, with your arms relaxed at your sides. Wear a thin top or an unpadded bra.
• Waist. Midway between your lowest rib and the top of your hip bone, which is usually just above the belly button. NICE gives the same method in its guidance on waist to height ratio.
• Hips. Around the widest part of your buttocks, with the tape level all the way round.
• High hip (optional). The widest point just below your waist. In the FFIT validation study by Devarajan and Istook (2004), the body scanner took the largest circumference in the top quarter of the distance from the crotch up to the waist.

Our guide on how to measure your waist shows the tape positions step by step. Use the same tape and the same spots each time, so that a change in your numbers reflects a change in your body.

The nine body shapes and the rule for each

Each FFIT shape is a combination of the three differences. The table lists the rules as published, in the order the software checks them. Pear and apple are everyday names rather than FFIT names. The FFIT authors treat a pear, larger on the bottom than the top, as the same shape as their triangle, and the oval and diamond are the shapes with a waist larger than the hips.

Two details change results more than people expect. The first is the order. Hips 3 inches larger than the bust with a waist 10 inches smaller than the hips fit both the hourglass rule and, with a wide high hip, the spoon rule, and the FFIT calls that body an hourglass because its rule comes first. The second is the high hip. With hips 5 inches larger than the bust and a waist 11 inches smaller than the hips, a high hip of 1.21 times the waist makes a spoon and 1.18 times makes a bottom hourglass.

Which body shape is most common?

In national survey data, the most common shape is the rectangle, not the hourglass. Lee and colleagues ran more than 6,300 women from the SizeUSA survey through the FFIT rules and found that rectangle was the largest group, as it was among Korean women. Only five of the American women fit none of the seven shapes they used, and all five had hips more than 10 inches (25.4 cm) larger than the bust.

The FFIT validation study gives the spread in more detail. Apparel experts sorted the 3D scans of 531 randomly chosen SizeUSA women by eye. Of those women, 153 were rectangles (29 percent), 90 hourglasses (17 percent), 89 spoons (17 percent), 81 ovals (15 percent) and 70 bottom hourglasses (13 percent). Top hourglass, triangle, inverted triangle and diamond were each under 4 percent.

Who you measure changes the answer. The original FFIT sample of 222 mostly young women in North Carolina was 40 percent bottom hourglass, 21.6 percent hourglass, 17.1 percent spoon, 15.8 percent rectangle, 3.6 percent oval and 1.8 percent triangle, with no inverted triangles, diamonds or top hourglasses. Shapes also shift with age and weight, as the next sections explain, so your shape describes you now rather than a type you are stuck with.

Body shape calculator for men

No validated measurement system sorts men's bodies the way the FFIT sorts women's, so read a man's result as a fitting convention rather than a research finding. For men, the calculator applies the same FFIT lines to chest, waist and hips and uses five names, checked in this order. Men are not asked for a high hip, so there is no spoon or bottom hourglass.

For men, the waist matters more than the shape name. The WHO report notes that men carry relatively more of their fat around the middle, and it treats a waist to hip ratio of 0.90 or more in men as a substantially increased risk of metabolic complications. A man with a 40 inch chest, 34 inch waist and 39 inch hips is a rectangle with a ratio of 0.87, under the line. If his waist grows to 36 inches, his ratio reaches 0.92 and crosses the line, while his shape name stays the same.

Apple or pear: why where you carry fat matters

Apple and pear describe where fat sits. An apple shape carries more around the waist, and a pear carries more on the hips and thighs. The WHO report explains that the waist to hip ratio reflects both the fat under the skin and the fat inside the abdomen. It also notes that women tend to store relatively more fat away from the middle in early adulthood, while men store relatively more around it.

Heart research points the same way. In the INTERHEART study, Yusuf and colleagues compared 12,461 people who had had a heart attack with 14,637 people who had not, across 52 countries. The odds of a heart attack rose with every step up in waist to hip ratio, to 2.52 times in the highest fifth compared with the lowest. A larger waist raised the odds and larger hips lowered them, even after body mass index was taken into account. The link with body mass index itself shrank from an odds ratio of 1.44 to 1.12 once the waist to hip ratio was considered.

That is why the calculator shows your waist to hip ratio next to your shape. The WHO 2008 report treats 0.85 or more in women and 0.90 or more in men as a substantially increased risk of metabolic complications. It lists waist lines as well: over 80 cm (31.5 in) for women and 94 cm (37.0 in) for men for increased risk, and over 88 cm (34.6 in) and 102 cm (40.2 in) for substantially increased risk. The report adds that those waist lines came from a Dutch sample and were offered as an example, not as a formal WHO recommendation.

The shape women see in themselves tends to match the tape. In a study by Thoma and colleagues (2012), 131 women with an average age of 32 picked a pear, hourglass, rectangle or apple drawing as their shape. Among those who were not obese, the average measured waist to hip ratios were 0.75, 0.75, 0.80 and 0.82. Their choice of apple or pear matched a measured ratio of 0.80 or more 83 percent of the time.

Your waist to height ratio adds a second check that works the same for women and men. NICE, which writes health guidance for England, classes 0.4 to 0.49 as healthy, 0.5 to 0.59 as increased and 0.6 or more as high central adiposity for adults with a BMI under 35, and advises keeping your waist under half your height. Our waist to height ratio calculator shows the waist that keeps you under 0.5 at your height, and the waist to hip ratio calculator shows the waist at which your hips would reach the WHO line. Our waist to hip ratio guide covers the research in more depth.

Why body shape changes in your 30s and 40s

Shape is not fixed in adulthood, and the WHO report summarizes several reasons the waist tends to grow over the years. In national survey data from 16,325 American women, those who had given birth had less fat on the lower body and larger waists. Waist size also rises with age. Finnish adults aged 25 to 64 gained 2.7 cm (1.1 in) at the waist in men and 4.3 cm (1.7 in) in women over 15 years, and the waist grew in every age group even where BMI changed little.

Menopause often gets the blame, and the evidence is mixed. The WHO report cites studies that link menopause to more fat around the abdomen, but notes that it is not clear whether hormones or aging cause the change. In the SWAN study of 3,064 women in midlife, menopause had no independent effect on fat distribution. Over three years the women gained an average of 2.2 cm (0.9 in) at the waist, a gain that age and activity level could explain. From late middle age, fat also tends to move from under the skin to inside the abdomen. Our review of menopause belly research goes into the details.

Genes set part of the pattern. In a Danish study of 624 pairs of adult twins with an average age of 38, Schousboe and colleagues (2004) estimated that genes explained 48 percent of the differences in waist size among women and 61 percent among men, and 52 and 58 percent of the differences in hip size. A genetic study of up to 224,459 people found 49 regions of DNA linked to waist to hip ratio regardless of BMI, 19 of them with stronger effects in women (Shungin and colleagues, 2015). Two people who train and eat the same way can still carry fat in different places.

What training can and cannot change

You cannot choose where you lose fat. In a trial by Vispute and colleagues (2011), 24 inactive adults either did seven abdominal exercises, two sets of 10 each, five days a week for six weeks, or did no exercise, and both groups kept eating the same. The exercise group got better at curl-ups, but their belly fat, body fat percentage, waist measurement and skinfolds did not change significantly. Our guide to the best exercises to lose belly fat covers what does work.

Whole-body training does reduce body fat. Pooling 54 trials in healthy adults, Wewege and colleagues (2022) found that full-body resistance training for at least four weeks cut body fat by 1.46 percentage points and fat mass by 0.55 kg (1.2 lb) compared with no exercise, and lowered visceral fat, the fat inside the abdomen. The results did not differ between women and men. In an earlier analysis of 35 trials in adults with overweight or obesity, Ismail and colleagues (2012) found that aerobic exercise reduced visceral fat, while resistance training on its own did not reach significance. A week with both cardio and strength work covers both findings.

Muscle is different, because it grows where you train it, and more training brings more growth. In a meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger (2017), each extra weekly set added about 0.37 percent to the gain in muscle size. Training your shoulders, upper back and chest can add to your chest measurement, and glute work can add to your hip measurement, which shifts the comparisons the shape rules use. Our guides on how to get broader shoulders and how to grow glutes have plans for both.

Training will not change your bone frame, or the pattern of where your body stores fat, which is partly inherited. It can lower your waist measurement and add muscle, and both show up in the numbers this calculator gives you.

Body type quiz: are you an ectomorph, mesomorph or endomorph?

Many body type quizzes sort people into ectomorph, mesomorph or endomorph. Those words come from William Sheldon, who introduced the somatotype with two colleagues in 1940, according to the history in the first FFIT paper. Sheldon built a system that linked body type to character. His eugenic views made him increasingly unpopular after the Second World War, and his former assistant, Barbara Honeyman Heath, publicly denounced his methods as fraudulent and his somatotypes as inaccurate (Vertinsky 2007).

Heath and Lindsay Carter later published a modified method (Heath and Carter 1967) that sports scientists still use. It rates three components: endomorphy for relative fatness, mesomorphy for muscle and bone, and ectomorphy for linearity. The ratings come from height, weight, four skinfolds, the breadths of the upper arm and thigh bones, and the girths of the upper arm and calf, taken with skinfold and bone calipers by a trained tester (Ondrejová and colleagues, 2025). A tape measure at home cannot produce those ratings, and neither can a quiz.

There is also no good evidence for eating or training by type. We searched PubMed for randomized trials that assigned diets or workouts by somatotype and found none. The research we found uses somatotype to describe groups such as athletes, not to prescribe for them. Your ratings would also change as you gained or lost fat or muscle, since two of the three components measure exactly that. This calculator describes proportions you can measure and leaves somatotypes out.

How accurate is this body shape calculator?

The arithmetic is exact, so the accuracy depends on two things. The first is how well the FFIT rules match what a body looks like. The second is how well your tape measurements match your body.

How often the rules agree with experts

In the FFIT validation study, Devarajan and Istook (2004) ran the 3D scans of 531 randomly chosen SizeUSA women through the original FFIT software and compared its answers with the shapes apparel experts saw. The software agreed for 474 women, 89.3 percent. Agreement was 100 percent for hourglass, bottom hourglass and top hourglass, 98 percent for rectangle, 82 percent for spoon, 75 percent for triangle, 71 percent for inverted triangle, 65 percent for oval and 33 percent for diamond, which had only 6 women.

Those figures belong to the original software, which judged oval and diamond from stomach and abdomen measurements. This calculator uses the published 2020 rules, which call a shape oval or diamond only when the waist is larger than the hips, so treat its apple results as a rough guide.

Where the tape goes changes the answer

Small differences in where a measurement is taken move people between shapes. Parker and colleagues (2021) analyzed 1,679 body scans and found that placing the measurements by the SizeUK survey's definitions instead of the FFIT's put the same body in a different shape in up to 40 percent of cases. In the validation study, the scanner sometimes took the waist or the high hip too high or too low, and some women sat at a crossover point between two shapes, such as hourglass and spoon. That is why the calculator flags any result within half an inch (1.3 cm) of a dividing line.

How accurate home measurements are

Careful home measurements can match a professional's. In a study by Barrios and colleagues (2016), 41 mothers with an average age of 38 watched a short video, made a paper tape and measured themselves at home. Their numbers agreed closely with those of trained technicians, with intraclass correlations of 0.97 for the waist and 0.96 for the hips and average differences of no more than 0.13 inches. Self-reported numbers are less reliable. In the EPIC-Oxford study of 4,492 adults aged 35 to 76, self-reported waists were on average 3.1 cm (1.2 in) smaller than measured waists in men and 1.9 cm (0.7 in) smaller in women (Spencer and colleagues, 2004). Measure rather than estimate, and follow the WHO advice to take each measurement twice.

What the shape does not tell you

A shape describes proportions. It does not measure body fat, and two people with the same shape can carry very different amounts of it. For an estimate of body fat, use our body fat calculator. For health, give more weight to your waist to hip and waist to height ratios than to the shape name.

Worked examples: ten sets of measurements

Each row runs the calculator on one set of measurements. Waist to height is blank where no height was entered.

Two patterns stand out. The same bust, waist and hips give a spoon or a bottom hourglass depending only on the high hip. And the two ovals, one woman and one man, are the only rows over the WHO waist to hip line, while every hourglass and V shape sits under it.

When to ignore this calculator

This calculator is for adults who want to describe their proportions and check their waist. In these cases the numbers can mislead, or measuring and labeling your body can do more harm than good.

• Pregnancy and the months after giving birth. Your waist and hips change for reasons the shape rules and the WHO lines were not built for. Ask your obstetric care team what to expect.
• An eating disorder or distress about your body, now or in the past. Measuring and labeling your shape can feed unhelpful checking. Talk to your treatment team or a clinician before using tools like this.
• Teenagers. The FFIT studies measured adult women, and the WHO and NICE lines on this page are for adults.
• A BMI of 35 or more. NICE's waist to height bands are for adults with a BMI under 35, and the original FFIT rules assumed a waist smaller than the bust and hips. The 2020 update was made for plus-size bodies, but ask a clinician which measures suit you.
• Conditions that change your shape. Fluid build-up from heart, liver or kidney disease, lymphedema, lipedema, a hernia or recent abdominal surgery can change your waist or hips in ways that have nothing to do with fat. Ask your doctor which measurements to track.

If measuring your shape leaves you feeling worse, stop. The calculator describes proportions, and your health does not depend on matching any shape.

Related reading

References

1. Simmons K, Istook CL, Devarajan P. "Female Figure Identification Technique (FFIT) for apparel. Part I: Describing female shapes." J Textile Apparel Technol Manag. 2004;4(1). Archived copy of the journal PDF. No DOI; the journal's current website does not carry its 2004 issue.
2. Simmons K, Istook CL, Devarajan P. "Female Figure Identification Technique (FFIT) for apparel. Part II: Development of shape sorting software." J Textile Apparel Technol Manag. 2004;4(1). Archived copy of the journal PDF. No DOI. Gives the shape descriptions, the search order and the shape counts in 222 women.
3. Devarajan P, Istook CL. "Validation of 'Female Figure Identification Technique (FFIT) for Apparel' software." J Textile Apparel Technol Manag. 2004;4(1). Archived copy of the journal PDF. No DOI.
4. Lee JY, Istook CL, Nam YJ, Park SM. "Comparison of body shape between USA and Korean women." Int J Cloth Sci Technol. 2007;19(5):374-391. doi:10.1108/09556220710819555. The full text is not open access; its formulas in inches are reproduced in Table 7 of reference 5.
5. Sokolowski SL, Bettencourt C. "Modification of the Female Figure Identification Technique (FFIT) formulas to include plus size bodies." Proceedings of 3DBODY.TECH 2020. doi:10.15221/20.22. Table 9 gives the formulas this calculator uses.
6. Parker CJ, Hayes SG, Brownbridge K, Gill S. "Assessing the female figure identification technique's reliability as a body shape classification system." Ergonomics. 2021;64(8):1035-1051. doi:10.1080/00140139.2021.1902572, PubMed 33719914
7. World Health Organization. Waist circumference and waist-hip ratio: report of a WHO expert consultation, Geneva, 8-11 December 2008. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2011. ISBN 9789241501491. iris.who.int/handle/10665/44583
8. Yusuf S, Hawken S, Ounpuu S, et al. "Obesity and the risk of myocardial infarction in 27,000 participants from 52 countries: a case-control study." Lancet. 2005;366(9497):1640-1649. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67663-5, PubMed 16271645
9. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Overweight and obesity management. NICE guideline NG246, recommendations 1.9.14 and 1.9.15 (2022). nice.org.uk/guidance/ng246
10. Thoma ME, Hediger ML, Sundaram R, et al. "Comparing apples and pears: women's perceptions of their body size and shape." J Womens Health. 2012;21(10):1074-1081. doi:10.1089/jwh.2012.3634, PMC3466911
11. Vispute SS, Smith JD, LeCheminant JD, Hurley KS. "The effect of abdominal exercise on abdominal fat." J Strength Cond Res. 2011;25(9):2559-2564. doi:10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181fb4a46, PubMed 21804427
12. Wewege MA, Desai I, Honey C, et al. "The effect of resistance training in healthy adults on body fat percentage, fat mass and visceral fat: a systematic review and meta-analysis." Sports Med. 2022;52(2):287-300. doi:10.1007/s40279-021-01562-2, PubMed 34536199
13. Ismail I, Keating SE, Baker MK, Johnson NA. "A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of aerobic vs. resistance exercise training on visceral fat." Obes Rev. 2012;13(1):68-91. doi:10.1111/j.1467-789X.2011.00931.x, PubMed 21951360
14. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. "Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: a systematic review and meta-analysis." J Sports Sci. 2017;35(11):1073-1082. doi:10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197, PubMed 27433992
15. Schousboe K, Visscher PM, Erbas B, et al. "Twin study of genetic and environmental influences on adult body size, shape, and composition." Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2004;28(1):39-48. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0802524, PubMed 14610529
16. Shungin D, Winkler TW, Croteau-Chonka DC, et al. "New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution." Nature. 2015;518(7538):187-196. doi:10.1038/nature14132, PubMed 25673412
17. Vertinsky P. "Physique as destiny: William H. Sheldon, Barbara Honeyman Heath and the struggle for hegemony in the science of somatotyping." Can Bull Med Hist. 2007;24(2):291-316. doi:10.3138/cbmh.24.2.291, PubMed 18447308
18. Heath BH, Carter JE. "A modified somatotype method." Am J Phys Anthropol. 1967;27(1):57-74. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330270108, PubMed 6049820
19. Ondrejová B, Bednarčíková L, Ferenčík N, Živčák J. "Validation of automated somatotype estimation proposal using full-body 3D scanning." Bioengineering (Basel). 2025;12(7):717. doi:10.3390/bioengineering12070717, PMC12292516
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How this calculator differs from typical body shape calculators

Most online body shape calculators ask for bust, waist and hips, show a shape name with a styling tip, and stop there. Few say which rules they use or where the numbers come from. Few ask for the high hip that separates a spoon from a bottom hourglass, and few mention that moving the tape a little changes the answer for a large share of people.

This calculator uses the published FFIT rules in the FFIT search order, with the inch thresholds from Lee et al. (2007) and the 2020 update for waists larger than the hips, and it shows the differences behind your result. It shows both possible shapes when a missing high hip would change the answer, flags results within half an inch of a line, and labels the men's shapes as a convention. It adds the WHO waist to hip check and the NICE waist to height check, because for health the waist matters more than the shape name, and it leaves somatotypes out.