Which ideal body weight?

BMI is a common tool that measures a person’s weight in relation to their height. A BMI calculation provides a single number, which falls into the following categories:

To calculate BMI, a person can use BMI calculators or review the charts below.

The following weight and height chart uses BMI tables from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to determine how much a person’s weight should be for their height.

Age is not a factor in BMI for adults, but it is for children. This is because they are growing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) use both age and natal sex in its BMI calculations for people between the ages of 2–19 years.

To calculate a child’s BMI, a person can use the CDC’s calculator for children and teenagers.

The CDC’s BMI charts for children use percentiles that compare measurements with boys and girls of the same age and gender.

BMI is a very simple measurement. While it takes height into consideration, it does not account for factors such as:

These factors can affect health. For example, high-performance athletes tend to be very fit and have little body fat. They can have a high BMI because they have more muscle mass, but this does not mean they weigh too much for their height.

Another limitation of BMI is that it does not distinguish between people of different ethnicities. Studies have shown that at the same BMI, non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, and Mexican Americans may have significantly different levels of body fat.

This inaccuracy may lead to a misdiagnosis or an incorrect assessment of risk factors between individuals.

BMI can offer a rough idea of whether or not a person is at a moderate weight, and it is useful for measuring trends in population studies.

BMI is used to determine whether your body weight is healthy and calculates your weight based on your height. The formula for calculating BMI is as follows:

× 10,000 = BMI

Both low and high BMI values indicate poor health:

However, there is a downside to BMI because it does not consider healthy muscle mass, fat distribution, and pelvic measurements.

For example, an athlete may have high muscle mass, but it is calculated as weight. As a result, their BMI measurement may indicate that the athlete is obese when they are actually healthy. Moreover, women and older men tend to store more fat than younger men.

Reports have suggested that WHR may be better than BMI at assessing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and premature death. WHR measures the narrowest portion of the waist, directly above the navel, divided by the circumference of the hip at its broadest point:

WC (waist circumference) / HC (hip circumference at the broadest point) = waist-to-hip ratio

According to the World Health Organization, a good WHR ratio is as follows:

Irrespective of sex, if a person has WHR higher than 1.0, that person is overweight and may have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases.

Calculating WHR may be difficult, however, because taking accurate hip measurements poses a challenge. For example, a person may have a greater WHR because of accumulated weight around the abdomen, but that weight could be either fat or muscle around the hips as a result of exercise.

When measuring body fat percentage, a health professional should measure thighs, abdomen, and chest in men and upper arm circumference in women. The range of accuracy should be 3.5%. To calculate body fat percentage:

WBD (weight of body fat) / TW (total weight) = body fat percentage

According to the American Council on Exercise, healthy essential body fat composition is as follows:

Other ways to determine body fat percentage include