Ideal Body Weight Calculator

Ideal body weight is a statistical estimate of a typical weight for your height and sex. The four formulas here were published between 1964 and 1983, each fitting a simple line to a reference population. They answer one narrow question: what does an average, mostly untrained adult of your height tend to weigh.

None of them alone. Devine became the most cited because hospitals adopted it for medication dosing, which says more about convenience than accuracy. The four formulas usually land within a few pounds of each other, so their average is the most useful single number on this page.

Muscle is the reason. A lifter carrying 15 to 20 lb more muscle than the reference population will sit above every formula while being leaner and healthier than the estimate assumes. These formulas see your height and sex. Your body composition never enters the math.

Body composition. Our body fat calculator estimates your fat percentage from tape measurements, and the lean body mass calculator turns that into the weight of your muscle, bone, and water. Those numbers respond to training. A height-based formula stays frozen while you change.

They still compute, since each formula subtracts its per-inch amount below the 5-foot base. The error grows quickly down there because the original data barely covered those heights, so treat the output as a rough sketch.

Frame size is real. Wider wrists and ankles usually come with more bone and muscle at the same height. The classic convention adjusts the estimate by about 10 percent up for a large frame and 10 percent down for a small one, which is the range shown under the headline.