BMI Chart for Men — Weight Ranges by Height

For adult men the healthy band is 18.5 to 24.9, the same range NHLBI publishes for women — one adult table, no sex column. Here it is, with the two bands above it, across the heights most men need:

Height	Healthy weight	Overweight	Obesity
5 ft 4 in	108–145 lb	146–174 lb	175 lb and up
5 ft 5 in	112–150 lb	151–180 lb	181 lb and up
5 ft 6 in	115–154 lb	155–185 lb	186 lb and up
5 ft 7 in	119–159 lb	160–191 lb	192 lb and up
5 ft 8 in	122–164 lb	165–197 lb	198 lb and up
5 ft 9 in	126–169 lb	170–203 lb	204 lb and up
5 ft 10 in	129–174 lb	175–209 lb	210 lb and up
5 ft 11 in	133–179 lb	180–215 lb	216 lb and up
6 ft 0 in	137–184 lb	185–221 lb	222 lb and up
6 ft 1 in	141–189 lb	190–227 lb	228 lb and up
6 ft 2 in	145–194 lb	195–233 lb	234 lb and up
6 ft 3 in	149–200 lb	201–240 lb	241 lb and up
6 ft 4 in	152–205 lb	206–246 lb	247 lb and up
6 ft 5 in	157–210 lb	211–253 lb	254 lb and up
6 ft 6 in	161–216 lb	217–259 lb	260 lb and up

Every cell is the formula solved for weight at the 18.5, 25.0 and 30.0 cutoffs, rounded so that each band starts on the pound after the previous one ends. No pound appears in two columns.

The false positive this table produces most often

A 5 ft 10 in man at 195 lb reads 28.0 and lands in “overweight”. So does a 5 ft 10 in man at 195 lb who deadlifts twice his body weight and carries 12% body fat. The table cannot separate them, because the formula takes total weight and squared height and has no third input.

This is not a rare edge case among men. Rugby players, powerlifters, wrestlers, most of a college football roster and a large share of people who have trained seriously for a few years read “overweight” here with body fat well inside a healthy range. Muscle is denser than fat, so building it raises the number in exactly the same direction as gaining fat does.

The way to tell which one you are is boringly simple. Look at the waist, look at whether your lifts and clothes moved in the same direction as the scale, and if it still matters, get body fat measured rather than inferred.

The number that does not lie about abdominal fat

NHLBI sets the men’s waist threshold at more than 40 inches. It is the most useful companion to this table because it targets exactly what BMI misses: visceral fat, packed around the organs, which carries more cardiometabolic risk than the same weight distributed elsewhere.

It also catches the opposite error from the lifter case. A sedentary man at 5 ft 10 in and 172 lb reads 24.7 and is technically inside the healthy band, but with a 41-inch waist he is in a worse position than the athlete this table flagged. BMI in, waist out — take both.

What changes with age, and what does not

The cutoffs never move. The body does. Past about 60, lean mass declines, fat fraction rises even at a stable weight, and measured height starts to shrink — and since height is squared in the denominator, an inch lost inflates BMI by about three quarters of a point without a single pound gained. A man whose weight has not changed in twenty years can drift a category on paper.

Take height again rather than reusing the number from your driver’s license, and remeasure barefoot against a wall.

How to use your row

Read across your height, then treat the result as one of three questions rather than an answer: is the weight muscle, is the waist over 40 inches, and is the trend moving. For the international version of these cutoffs and the populations where they shift, see the WHO BMI classification; for the full chart across every adult height, see the BMI chart.

This content is informational and does not replace evaluation by a health professional.