Ideal Weight Calculator

How to use the Ideal Weight Calculator

1. 1
   Select your sex. Every formula here uses a different base weight for male and female bodies.
2. 2
   Enter your height. Height in centimetres. All four formulas work from height alone.
3. 3
   Compare the range. Read the healthy range first, then the four formulas to see how much they disagree.

About ideal body weight

The idea of a single ideal body weight is more medical convenience than biological fact. The Devine formula, still the most cited, was published in 1974 as a way of estimating drug doses, not as a health target, and its author never presented supporting data. Robinson, Miller and Hamwi followed with their own adjustments, each fitted to different reference populations, and the four routinely disagree by five kilograms or more for the same person. That spread is genuinely informative: it shows how wide the reasonable band is. All four share a deeper limitation in working from height and sex alone, which means they cannot see frame size, muscle mass or fat distribution. A rower and a sedentary office worker of identical height receive identical targets. This is why a healthy range derived from BMI is presented first here, and why body composition measures are more useful still for anyone whose build sits far from average. Use the range as orientation rather than a goal, and weigh it against waist circumference and how you actually feel and function.

Frequently asked questions