The perfect body measurements for you can be calculated with a few simple tools found below. How do we know what the ideal female body measurements are?

Generally, what women find attractive in other women are things that indicate social status, like wearing fashionable clothing, the right colour nail polish and being found attractive by men. Men of course, are hard wired to find women who look healthy and able to bare children most attractive.

Because of this, both women and men find women who look healthy, feminine and fertile attractive (even though women do tend to alter their idea of what is attractive based on fashion and trends, it never goes very far from what men value as attractive). So here are the formule. Keep in mind that less than 5% of women meet these standards.

1. A Relatively Low Body Fat Percentage – A body fat percentage of 14-24%

There a lots of methods of measuring body fat. You can get a rough idea of your body fat by using this online body fat calculator. But, if you want a

more accurate reading, your best bet is to go and ask to have it done in a gym or clinic. Alternatively, you can buy a scale with an inbuilt body fat monitor.

18% is a good target for your ideal body fat percentage – although up to 25% is perfectly healthy, you won’t look quite so good in a bikini. Over 25% is considered ‘average’ (ie: overweight) while over 32% is officially obese. Go below 18% and you’ll start to look scrawny, and worse, below 12% you will be risking long term damage to your hormonal functions which influence all aspects of your health including your bone density, the health of your nails, hair and skin and your fertility.

Other than keeping fat on our bodies for health reasons, there are also purely aesthetic reasons to maintain about 18% body fat. For example, breasts are roughly 80% fat and they will start to disappear as your body fat percentage decreases (this is one of the reasons so many female body builders have succumb to plastic lady lumps). It also comes back to being healthy and fertile – very skinny women are often infertile, and therefore an evolutionary turn off to men (although they may still be attracted by the idea of having a status symbol or fashionably skinny trophy wife/girlfriend).

Losing fat is one of those things that tends to work in theory, but not in practice. As a general rule, avoid white carbohydrates (pasta, bread, cake, sugar, rice, flour) and exercise intensely a few times a week – this will show fast results if you were previously leading an unhealthy lifestyle.

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Body, was recently invited to speak at Google. When asked for specific advice for women he said, “if you eat for fertility, as a woman, you’ll generally also get optimal athletic performance and fat loss.” He recommends removing gluten (since it affects hormone regulation) from your diet by removing grains; and increasing saturated your fat intake.

2. An Obvious Waist – A a pear or, ideally an hourglass body shape with a waist to hip ratio of between 0.68 and 0.72

You can easily calculate your body shape using this body type calculator.You can calculate your waist to hip ratio by dividing your waist measurement by your hip measurement, or by using this calculator. (Note: For both of these calculations, measure the smallest part of your midsection as your ‘waist’ and the largest area around your bottom as your ‘hips’). If your waist to hip ratio is over 0.72, you need to decrease the size of your waist or increase the size of your hips. And if your waist to hip ratio is under 0.68, the reverse is true.

Why are relatively small waists attractive? The smaller your waist is, the larger your hips appear in comparison. Wide hips are necessary for childbirth and are therefore, a noticeably feminine trait. Smaller waists also indicate better health, since women with waists that measure more than 80 cm (31.5 inches) are more at risk of heart disease and other health problems. As if this wasn’t enough, women with hourglass figures also tend to have higher oestrogen levels and therefore higher fertility rates.

Your waist size will decrease as you lose fat. To help define your waist even more you can do exercises like side plank for tight obliques.

3. Muscle Tone – Visible muscle tone

It’s a personal choice how much or how little muscle tone you want to develop. Most women don’t want high muscle definition (for fear of looking too masculine), but some muscle tone is desirable.

When it came to surviving childbirth, raising children – hell, surviving pre-industrial age in general – muscle was a necessity. For this reason, to this day, stick arms are NOT SEXY (models and fashion photographers please take note!).

To achieve muscle tone, workout a few times a week using weights, your body weight or even water resistance. Muscle tone also indicates youth since the hormone testosterone, a hormone that aids muscle development, decreases as we age.

4. Flexibility – Flexible enough to do the splits

You can consider yourself flexible once you can do side/front-splits. You can consider yourself very flexible once you can go through side-splits and you can do box/forward-splits.

Oestrogen, a primarily female hormone, increases flexibility. It also diminishes as we age. So being flexible indicates both femininity and youth. This is important because youth is linked directly with fertility in women. After the age of 35 a woman’s fertility decreases dramatically. And because flexibility is such an important indicator of fertility, men find it attractive.

The more flexible you are the better. There are lots of other advantages to being flexible like a lower risk of sports injury and better quality of life (you’ll feel younger as you age). Being able to do front splits will improve your posture since you need to have flexible hip flexors to be able to do it. Yoga, dance and stretching at home are some of the best ways to increase flexibility.

5. Curves – Gravity deifying breasts and butt

Contrary to popular belief, most men don’t appear to care about size – it’s all about roundness. Sagginess is an indicator of age, and youth is directly linked to fertility.

You can’t do much to change your breasts. But you can prevent permanent damage to them by wearing a good sports bra when exercising. Please really think carefully if you’re considering plastic surgery, because it’s irreversible, it can cause permanent damage, and not everyone is a fan of silicone. Of course, if you’re like most women, 99.99% of the population never see your breasts so you can just cheat your way to perfect curves and wear a well shaped push-up or t-shirt bra. However, there is no excuse for a less than perfect posterior. Lunges, cycling and stairs are your friends.

This Article is Probably Controversial

Magazines often feature articles on ‘real women’ – usually overweight women – as if it’s empowering or something that we should admire. But, being overweight often means being disabled in many ways. It stops you from doing the things that you want to do, like spontaneously running across the city, cycling to see your grandma in the next city or just climbing a set of stairs without being out of breath by the time you get to the top. It restricts you and equates to a lower quality of life.  Let’s not pretend it’s okay to have a suboptimal life – you’ve only got one!

The same can be said, of course for girls who have a real problem with body image, anorexia, or bulimia. But they too should be aiming for an ideal body. They will likely need to gain muscle, fat and bone mass to achieve an ideal body - although it might be harder for them to achieve because of the psychological implications.

Every woman on earth has the ability to meet the criteria of the ideal body listed above. It’s not ‘unrealistic’ or ‘extreme’, but yes, it will take some work if you’ve neglected your body in the past. It is achievable. It’s up to you to decide if you want to have an amazing body or a mediocre one. For more advice on fat loss subscribe for free to email or RSS updates.