Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have emerged as a promising solution for addressing challenges faced by elderly individuals, limited medical facilities, and various chronic medical conditions. WBANs consist of wearable sensing and computing devices interconnected through wireless communication channels, enabling the collection and transmission of vital physiological data. However, the energy constraints of the battery-powered sensor nodes in WBANs pose a significant challenge to ensuring long-term operational efficiency. Two-hop routing protocols have been suggested to extend the stability period and maximize the network’s lifetime. These protocols select appropriate parent nodes or forwarders with a maximum of two hops to relay data from sensor nodes to the sink. While numerous energy-efficient routing solutions have been proposed for WBANs, reliability has often been overlooked. Our paper introduces an energy-efficient routing protocol called a Hybrid Clustering Approach for Extending WBAN Lifetime (HCEL) to address these limitations. HCEL leverages a utility function to select parent nodes based on residual energy (RE), proximity to the sink node, and the received signal strength indicator (RSSI). The parent node selection process also incorporates an energy threshold value and a constrained number of serving nodes. The main goal is to extend the overall lifetime of all nodes within the network. Through extensive simulations, the study shows that HCEL outperforms both Stable Increased Throughput Multihop Protocol for Link Efficiency (SIMPLE) and Energy-Efficient Reliable Routing Scheme (ERRS) protocols in several key performance metrics. The specific findings of our article highlight the superior performance of HCEL in terms of increased network stability, extended network lifetime, reduced energy consumption, improved data throughput, minimized delays, and improved link reliability.