What Is Ideal Body Weight?
“What should I weigh for my height?” is one of the most-asked health questions, and the standard answers come from formulas with a surprising past: hospital pharmacists needed a lean-body-weight stand-in for dosing drugs like digoxin and aminoglycosides, and Dr. B.J. Devine's 1974 equation — plus the refinements that followed — escaped the pharmacy and became the internet's “ideal weight.”
Enter your sex and height to see all four equations, the range they span, and the healthy-BMI band for comparison. The formulas agree within a few kilograms for average heights and diverge at the extremes — visible proof that “ideal” is an estimate family, not a fact.
Comparing your current weight against the healthy band? That's the BMI Calculator.
How to Calculate Ideal Weight: Four Formulas
All four use the same shape — a base at 5 feet plus a per-inch increment (kg):
Devine: M 50.0 + 2.3/in over 5 ft F 45.5 + 2.3 Robinson: M 52.0 + 1.9 F 49.0 + 1.7 Miller: M 56.2 + 1.41 F 53.1 + 1.36 Hamwi: M 48.0 + 2.7 F 45.5 + 2.2 Healthy-BMI band: 18.5 × h² to 24.9 × h² (h in meters)
Worked example: a 5′10″ man spans 70.3 kg (Miller) to 75.0 kg (Hamwi) — about 155–165 lb — while his healthy-BMI band runs a much wider 58.5–78.7 kg (129–174 lb). The spread between the two framings is the honest takeaway.
Ideal Weight Chart by Height
Devine values (the most-quoted formula) with the healthy-BMI band — all computed by this calculator:
| Height | Devine (men) | Devine (women) | Healthy-BMI band |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5′2″ (157 cm) | 54.6 kg / 120 lb | 50.1 kg / 110 lb | 45.9–61.8 kg |
| 5′6″ (168 cm) | 63.8 kg / 141 lb | 59.3 kg / 131 lb | 52.1–70.1 kg |
| 5′10″ (178 cm) | 73.0 kg / 161 lb | 68.5 kg / 151 lb | 58.5–78.7 kg |
| 6′2″ (188 cm) | 82.2 kg / 181 lb | 77.7 kg / 171 lb | 65.4–88.0 kg |
Notice the formulas sit in the upper-middle of the BMI band — they describe a lean-ish reference body, not a minimum.
What Ideal Weight Formulas Cannot See
Height-only formulas are blind to everything that actually differentiates bodies: muscle mass (athletes routinely exceed every “ideal” while carrying less fat than average), frame size, age (some evidence favors slightly higher weights past 65), and where fat sits — waist-based measures track health risk better than scale weight at the same BMI.
Useful ways to use this page anyway: the range is a reasonable sanity check for goal-setting conversations; the BMI band is the evidence-backed outer envelope; and the drug-dosing history is a genuinely good reason not to treat any single number as a verdict. Body composition, fitness, and labs beat the scale — a clinician can weigh all three.