and that should be your natural waist. measure there.� do not hold your stomach in as this will make a skin tight fit. do not measure where your pants are worn as this will throw the size off. put the tape around the waist area smoothly right on the skin and do not give any slack or have a finger in between tape and body. it's best to have someone else and preferably a professional seamstress do this for you. it's probably the most important measurement and needs to be 100% accurate to obtain the correct size. not everyone will fit the chart perfectly so we need these numbers to 