What Is Your Ideal Weight for Your Height?

There is no single ideal weight for a given height. What people usually mean by ideal weight is really a healthy range, not one exact number. A common approach is the weight range that puts your BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 for your height, and classic formulas from Devine, Robinson, and Hamwi also estimate an ideal body weight from height alone. These are general guidelines, so frame size, muscle, age, and overall health all matter. Treat any single figure as a rough target, not a rule.

What Is Your Ideal Weight for Your Height?

The honest answer is that no single weight is correct for everyone of a given height. Two people who stand exactly the same can both be perfectly healthy at noticeably different weights, because their bodies are built differently. So instead of one target, it helps to think about a healthy range, a span of weights that tends to be associated with lower health risk for most adults at that height.

The most widely used way to describe that range is the body mass index, or BMI. BMI compares your weight to your height, and health agencies commonly treat a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 as the healthy range for adults. Turn that range around, and for any height you can read off the band of weights that lands inside it. That band is the closest thing to an ideal weight for your height, and it is a range on purpose.

Older clinical formulas take a different route and estimate one ideal body weight number from your height. They are useful shortcuts, but they were built for specific medical tasks, not as a personal goal. Both approaches are covered below.

The BMI Range Method: Weight for a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9

BMI is your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters. You do not have to do that math by hand, because the same idea works in reverse. If a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is the healthy range, then for a fixed height there is a matching low weight and high weight that produce those two BMI values. Everything between them sits inside the range.

The table below shows those general weight ranges for a set of common heights. The figures are rounded to whole pounds and are meant as broad guidelines, not exact cutoffs. A weight a pound or two outside a band does not flip you between healthy and unhealthy, and the edges are soft. To find the range for your own exact height, the BMI Calculator does the arithmetic in one step, and our companion guide explains what a healthy BMI is in more detail.

Notice how wide each band is. At 5 feet 8 inches, for example, roughly a 40 pound span all counts as a healthy weight. That width is the whole point. It leaves room for the natural differences between bodies of the same height, and it is why chasing one exact number rarely makes sense. The chart below shows how the range slides upward and widens as height increases.

Classic Ideal Body Weight Formulas (Devine, Robinson, Hamwi)

Before BMI became common, clinicians used simple formulas to estimate an ideal body weight from height. Three still appear in calculators today. Each starts from a base weight at 5 feet tall and adds a set amount for every inch above that. They give one number rather than a range, and they use slightly different constants, so their answers differ a little.

The three most cited formulas work like this for adults taller than 5 feet:

• Hamwi (1964): for men, about 48 kg plus 2.7 kg per inch over 5 feet; for women, about 45.5 kg plus 2.2 kg per inch. It was designed as a quick bedside estimate.
• Devine (1974): for men, about 50 kg plus 2.3 kg per inch over 5 feet; for women, about 45.5 kg plus 2.3 kg per inch. It was created to help calculate medication doses, not to set a fitness goal.
• Robinson (1983): for men, about 52 kg plus 1.9 kg per inch over 5 feet; for women, about 49 kg plus 1.7 kg per inch. It is a later refinement of the earlier formulas.

For an adult who is 5 feet 8 inches tall, the three formulas land within a few kilograms of each other, as the chart shows. That closeness hides their shared limitation: height is the only input. Two people of the same height and sex get the identical estimate no matter how they are built. If you want to see all three at once for your own height, the Ideal Weight Calculator runs each formula side by side.

Because these formulas were built for clinical shortcuts, they are best read as ballpark figures. They can sit near the middle of the BMI healthy range for many people, which is a handy sanity check, but they are not a more precise or more personal answer than the range itself.

Why One Number Cannot Capture a Healthy Weight

Height is only one thing about a body, so any method that uses height alone will miss a lot. Several factors move where a healthy weight sits for you, and none of them show up in a simple formula.

Frame Size and Bone Structure

People with a broader build and heavier bone structure naturally weigh more than people with a slighter frame at the same height, without either being less healthy. That is why the BMI range spans so many pounds. A larger frame often sits toward the upper part of the band.

Muscle Versus Fat

Muscle is denser than fat, so a very muscular person can weigh more than a formula suggests while carrying little excess fat. BMI and the classic formulas cannot tell muscle and fat apart, which is a well known limitation.

Age, Sex, and Body Changes

Body composition shifts across a lifetime. Older adults often carry more fat and less muscle at the same weight than they did when younger, and men and women differ in how they store fat. A weight that felt right at one stage of life may sensibly be different at another.

Where You Carry Weight

Two people at the same BMI can face different health outlooks depending on where fat is stored, with weight around the waist carrying more risk than weight around the hips. This is why some measures look at waist size rather than weight alone. Our comparison of waist-to-height ratio versus BMI explains how those two views complement each other.

How to Use These Numbers Well

The most useful way to treat an ideal weight for your height is as a broad reference point, not a scorecard. Find your BMI range or a formula estimate, notice roughly where your weight sits relative to it, and hold the result loosely. A number a little inside or outside a band tells you very little on its own.

What matters more is the fuller picture: your activity, your eating patterns, your sleep, your family history, and measures your clinician can check that a scale cannot. Weight is one signal among many, and most meaningful in that fuller context. If your weight has changed a lot, or you are unsure what is healthy for you, a healthcare provider can interpret these numbers alongside the rest of your health.

FAQs About Ideal Weight

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Not medical advice: This article is general educational information only. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a treatment plan, and it is not a comment on any individual body. Healthy weight ranges, BMI, and the classic formulas are broad guidelines that do not account for frame size, muscle, age, or your overall health, and they can be misleading for some people. Do not use this page to set a weight-loss goal on your own. Talk to a qualified healthcare provider about what is healthy for you before making changes to your weight, diet, or activity. Reviewed for general accuracy by Dr. Abdullah Khalil, MBBS, as part of our editorial review process. Content last reviewed September 10, 2026.