Ideal Weight Chart by Height, and What It Misses
Every ideal weight chart you have ever seen traces back to a formula written between 1871 and 1983, and the four common ones disagree with each other by up to 8 kg at the same height.
Worth knowing before you treat any single figure as a target. The ideal weight for height that a chart hands you is one formula’s opinion, and your body was never consulted.
Ideal weight by height, men
These use the Devine formula, the one most clinical charts are built on: 50 kg plus 2.3 kg for every inch over 5 feet.
- 5’4″ (163 cm): 59.9 kg, healthy BMI range 49 to 66 kg
- 5’6″ (168 cm): 64.5 kg, healthy range 52 to 70 kg
- 5’8″ (173 cm): 69.1 kg, healthy range 55 to 74 kg
- 5’10” (178 cm): 73.7 kg, healthy range 59 to 79 kg
- 6’0″ (183 cm): 78.3 kg, healthy range 62 to 84 kg
- 6’2″ (188 cm): 82.9 kg, healthy range 65 to 88 kg
Ideal weight by height, women
Devine for women: 45.5 kg plus 2.3 kg per inch over 5 feet.
- 5’0″ (152 cm): 45.5 kg, healthy range 43 to 58 kg
- 5’2″ (157 cm): 50.1 kg, healthy range 46 to 62 kg
- 5’4″ (163 cm): 54.7 kg, healthy range 49 to 66 kg
- 5’6″ (168 cm): 59.3 kg, healthy range 52 to 70 kg
- 5’8″ (173 cm): 63.9 kg, healthy range 55 to 74 kg
- 5’10” (178 cm): 68.5 kg, healthy range 59 to 79 kg
Look at the gap between the two columns
At 5’8″, Devine says 69.1 kg for a man. The healthy BMI range at that height runs from 55 to 74 kg, a spread of 19 kg. The formula picks one point out of a band nineteen kilos wide and calls it ideal.
Nothing about your body changes as you cross 69.1 kg. A man at 64 kg and a man at 73 kg at that height are both fine, and which one is better off comes down entirely to what the weight is made of. The ideal weight calculator runs all four formulas at once so you can see the whole spread instead of one cherry-picked figure.
Where these numbers came from
Devine published his in 1974, and health was never the point. He needed a standard body weight for calculating drug doses, specifically gentamicin. It was a clinical convenience that escaped into fitness culture.
Hamwi wrote his in 1964 for estimating diabetic diet requirements. Robinson revised Devine in 1983, Miller revised it again the same year, and Broca wrote the oldest of the lot in 1871 as height in centimetres minus 100. Not one of them was derived from mortality data, and not one accounts for frame size, muscle mass or age.
The full comparison, including which one to use if you have to pick, is in the four ideal weight formulas and why they disagree.
What the charts miss
Frame size, first. Wrist circumference varies enough between adults of the same height that clinical practice used to add or subtract 10% for small and large frames. Most modern charts dropped the adjustment and kept the number.
Muscle mass, second. A 178 cm man who trains seriously can carry 84 kg at 12% body fat, which puts him 10 kg over his Devine figure and in better shape than almost everybody sitting at 73.7 kg.
Age, third. Your muscle falls 3 to 8% per decade after thirty, so holding the same weight from 25 to 55 usually means you have swapped muscle for fat while the chart saw nothing happen. Body recomposition covers what to do about that.
A better way to set a target
Work backwards from your body composition instead of forwards from your height. Measure your body fat, work out your lean mass, pick the percentage you want, and see what it weighs. A man with 62 kg of lean mass targeting 15% body fat lands at 73 kg, and that figure means something, because it came out of his body and not out of a table.
Run the measurements through the body fat calculator first. Then check the result against the range on the chart above. Agreement gives you a target. Wide disagreement means you trust the composition figure.
If you want the chart as a category check instead of a goal, what BMI measures covers what the healthy weight range is doing and where it fails.
Scope and correction note, 20 October 2026: the ranges quoted here come from the American Council on Exercise and from published research, and they describe averages, not any individual. Nothing on this page is medical advice. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and date the correction. See the editorial policy and medical disclaimer.