ReckonBoxHow much should you weigh?
A healthy weight is a range for your height, running from a BMI of 18.5 to 25, not a single figure. For a 5 foot 10 inch adult that band runs from about 129 to 174 pounds. Six classic ideal-weight formulas land inside it and disagree with each other by roughly 17 pounds, which tells you most of what you need to know about how precise any of them are.
This calculator gives you three things: the healthy range from your height, the weight at whichever target BMI you pick inside that band, and what each formula returns. Enter a current weight in the options and it adds adjusted body weight, the figure clinicians use when dosing medication in heavier patients.
The formulas were written for drug dosing
Ideal body weight equations were built to make medication dosage calculations easier, not to describe how anyone should look. calculator.net, the top-ranked result for this search, says so directly and adds that the concept has nothing to do with appearance. Omni names a concrete use, computing immunoglobulin doses. MDCalc, the clinical reference, applies ideal body weight to set ventilator tidal volume and to dose drugs, and warns readers to confirm any dose with a pharmacy, because some medications dose on ideal weight and others on actual weight.
That origin is the most useful fact on this entire search and almost nobody leads with it. MDCalc, the one tool clinicians actually reach for, carries no warning whatsoever about treating its output as a personal weight goal.
| Formula | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Hamwi (1964) | 48.0 kg + 2.7 kg per inch over 5 ft | 45.5 kg + 2.2 kg per inch |
| Devine (1974) | 50.0 kg + 2.3 kg per inch over 5 ft | 45.5 kg + 2.3 kg per inch |
| Robinson (1983) | 52 kg + 1.9 kg per inch over 5 ft | 49 kg + 1.7 kg per inch |
| Miller (1983) | 56.2 kg + 1.41 kg per inch over 5 ft | 53.1 kg + 1.36 kg per inch |
| Broca | height in cm minus 100 | 85% of (height in cm minus 100) |
| Lorentz | (cm - 100) - (cm - 150) / 4 | (cm - 100) - (cm - 150) / 2 |
At 5 foot 10, Broca returns the highest figure and Miller the lowest, 17 pounds apart. Omni calls Devine the most medically validated of the group, and it is the one medicine actually uses, yet clinical references note it lacks a scientific basis. It survived because it was simple and everyone agreed to be wrong in the same direction.
Why a range beats a single number
A healthy weight is a band because bodies at the same height are not interchangeable. Two people at 5 foot 10 can both be well at 135 and at 170 pounds, since muscle is denser than fat and frames differ. Six formulas disagreeing by 17 pounds is not a flaw to resolve by picking the best one; it's the evidence that no single number was ever available.
Set the target BMI field wherever you want to sit inside the band. That's the only control here that answers the question people actually arrive with, and none of the ranked competitors offers it.
The published bands differ slightly too. NHLBI gives 18.5 to 24.9, the American Heart Association 18.5 to 25, and calculator.net converts the WHO band of 18.5 to 25. A pound or two of boundary, worth knowing before you agonise over a decimal.
Does age change your ideal weight?
For adults, no. MedicalNewsToday states it flatly: age is not a factor in BMI for adults, and enters only for children aged 2 to 19. The formulas and the healthy band use height and sex alone, so a 25 year old and a 55 year old of the same height share a target.
People search for weight by height and age constantly, so the demand reflects a real belief. The math behind every adult chart ignores the birthday. One genuine exception waits at the far end of life: AARP points to research that a slightly higher BMI, roughly 25 to 28, tracks with lower mortality after 65, when holding on to muscle matters more than a lean number.
Healthy weight by height
Straight from the BMI band of 18.5 to 25, the same math the calculator runs for your exact height.
| Height | Healthy range |
|---|---|
| 5 ft 2 in | 101 to 137 lb |
| 5 ft 4 in | 108 to 146 lb |
| 5 ft 6 in | 115 to 155 lb |
| 5 ft 8 in | 122 to 164 lb |
| 5 ft 10 in | 129 to 174 lb |
| 6 ft 0 in | 136 to 184 lb |
When BMI reads you wrong
Dense muscle is the classic misread. The American Heart Association notes that well-trained people can post a high BMI while carrying very little body fat, and points to waist circumference, skinfold thickness or direct body-fat measurement as better tools for them. MedicalNewsToday raises waist-to-height ratio as another check worth running.
Bupa lists ethnicity, age, sex and muscle mass as factors that shift what a healthy weight looks like for an individual. It publishes no ethnicity-specific thresholds, and neither does any other page fetched for this build, so we don't either; inventing cut-offs to look thorough would be worse than the omission.
Adjusted body weight and when it matters
Adjusted body weight is ideal weight plus 40 percent of the gap between actual and ideal weight. Fat tissue changes how a drug spreads through the body, so dosing a heavier patient on raw weight can overshoot and on ideal weight can undershoot. Pharmacists split the difference with the 0.4 factor. It's a clinical dosing figure with no bearing on a goal weight, and it appears here only when you enter a current weight above your ideal.
Where these numbers fall short
Height and sex are thin inputs for a question this personal. The formulas can't see a powerlifter's muscle or a tall person's light frame, so an athlete often reads as overweight and a small-boned person as underweight. Frame size is a real adjustment that this tool and most others leave out, because no fetched source supplies a usable measurement rule for it.
Children and pregnancy are out of scope. Omni excludes both, and children are scored against growth percentiles because they're still growing.
Results are estimates, not medical advice. For a weight target built around your health, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian. To see where your current weight sits, use the BMI calculator, and for the muscle-versus-fat picture, the body fat calculator.
Frequently asked questions
What is a healthy weight for my height? A healthy weight is a range rather than a figure, running from a BMI of 18.5 to 25 for your height. A 5 foot 10 inch adult falls between about 129 and 174 pounds. The NHLBI publishes the same band as 18.5 to 24.9, and the American Heart Association gives 18.5 to 25, so the boundary moves by a fraction depending on which body you read.
What is ideal body weight, and what was it built for? Ideal body weight is an estimate drawn from formulas written for medicine between 1964 and 1983, and calculator.net states plainly that they were developed mainly to make drug dosage calculations easier. Omni names a specific use, computing immunoglobulin doses, and MDCalc uses ideal body weight to set ventilator tidal volume. None of that has anything to do with how a person looks.
Which ideal weight formula is most accurate? None is clearly best. Six respected equations disagree by about 17 pounds at 5 foot 10, with Broca highest and Miller lowest, and Omni calls Devine the most medically validated of the set. That spread is the argument for reading the BMI range instead of any single output.
Does ideal weight change with age? For adults, no. MedicalNewsToday states directly that age is not a factor in BMI for adults, only for children aged 2 to 19. The formulas and the healthy band use height and sex alone, so a 25 year old and a 55 year old of the same height share the same number.
What is adjusted body weight? Adjusted body weight is ideal weight plus 40 percent of the gap between actual and ideal weight. Clinicians use it to dose some medications in heavier patients, because fat tissue changes how a drug distributes. MDCalc advises confirming any dose with a pharmacy, since some drugs dose on ideal weight and others on actual weight.
Why does BMI misread muscular people? Because it cannot see the difference between muscle and fat. The American Heart Association notes that well-trained people with dense muscle can score a high BMI while carrying very little body fat, and points to waist circumference, skinfold thickness or direct body-fat measurement instead. MedicalNewsToday raises waist-to-height ratio as another useful check.
Who should not use this calculator? Children and pregnant people. Omni excludes both explicitly, and children are scored against growth percentiles rather than a fixed band because they are still growing. Anyone with high muscle mass should read the result alongside a body-composition measure.
Sources
- calculator.net ideal weight calculator, on the drug-dosing origin and the four classic formulas
- MDCalc, ideal body weight and adjusted body weight (clinical dosing and tidal volume)
- NHLBI, calculate your BMI (published healthy band)
- American Heart Association, BMI in adults (limits for muscular builds)
- Pai MP, Paloucek FP, 2000, the origin of the ideal body weight equations