How to Find Your Ideal Weight for Your Height
Learn what the classic ideal-weight formulas do, why they disagree, and why a healthy weight is a range rather than a single number.
Quick Answer
There is no single ideal weight, which is why this tool shows several. The classic formulas, Devine, Robinson, Miller, and Hamwi, each estimate a target weight from your height and sex, and they disagree by a few kilograms because they were built at different times with different numbers. Alongside them sits the modern BMI healthy range for your height. Read the formula average as a central anchor and the BMI range as the realistic band around it, and pick a point inside that band that suits your build.
Try The Ideal Weight Calculator →How the Formulas Work
Every classic ideal-weight formula shares the same shape: a base weight for someone five feet tall, plus a fixed amount added for each inch above that. Devine, the best known, uses 50 kg for men and 45.5 kg for women, adding 2.3 kg per inch. The others simply pick different bases and per-inch amounts, which is why their answers spread out. None of them uses anything beyond height and sex, so they are fast to compute but blunt: two people the same height get the same estimate regardless of frame or muscle.
Why They Disagree
The formulas were created for different eras and uses, several of them to help calculate medication doses rather than to define fitness. Hamwi, from the 1960s, tends to sit highest; Miller, from the 1980s, tends to sit lowest; Devine and Robinson land in between. Seeing all four at once is the point. A single number pretends to a precision that does not exist, while a spread of a few kilograms tells the truth: your target is approximate.
Use the Range, Not the Point
The modern approach skips the single-number formulas in favour of the BMI healthy-weight range, which spans every weight giving a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 at your height. It is deliberately wide because healthy bodies come in different builds. Any weight inside that band is reasonable, and where you aim within it depends on your frame, muscle, and how you feel and perform, not on a formula from decades ago.