How Much Should I Weigh? The Honest Answer

You should weigh somewhere inside a band about 40 pounds wide. That is the real answer, and it is not evasion: US agencies define healthy weight as a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, and once you convert that to pounds at a fixed height it is always a range. At 5 ft 5 in it runs 112 to 150 lb.

Your height	You should weigh
5 ft 2 in	102–136 lb
5 ft 5 in	112–150 lb
5 ft 8 in	122–164 lb
5 ft 11 in	133–179 lb

Why the answer refuses to be a number

Because the risk data underneath it is flat across the band. Neither the NHLBI nor the NIDDK names a preferred point inside 18.5 to 24.9, and no study has established that the midpoint beats the edges for someone without symptoms. When researchers rebuilt the ideal-weight equation in 2016 for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, they said so directly: there is no single ideal weight that applies across all conditions. Their formula was designed to return a weight at whatever BMI you name, precisely so a clinician could prescribe a range.

If you need one figure, here is how to pick it

A goal needs a number, so choose one — but choose it from evidence you actually have:

• A weight you have held before. If you maintained 145 lb for a year without effort and it falls inside your band, that is stronger evidence than any equation. Your body has already demonstrated it.
• Not the midpoint. The middle of the band has no special standing; it is the average of two arbitrary cutoffs.
• Not a formula. Devine, Robinson, Hamwi and Miller were written to standardize drug doses from height and sex, and at the same height they disagree with each other by up to twenty pounds.
• Not the bottom. The upper end of the band is healthy weight by definition and is almost always easier to maintain, which is what determines whether a goal survives.

The goal weight calculator covers the step after that — how far to go first and how fast.

The second number, which often matters more

Weight cannot tell you where fat sits, and abdominal fat is what the cardiovascular risk is about. The NHLBI pairs its BMI ranges with a waist threshold: more than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men raises risk. Two people at the same weight and height, one with a 30-inch waist and one with a 42-inch waist, are in genuinely different positions and this page cannot tell them apart. Measure at the navel, standing, tape level, without pulling.

Weighing yourself so the number means something

Same time, same conditions, or the comparison is noise. Morning, after the bathroom, before breakfast, barefoot or in the same light clothes. Food, salt and fluid move an adult by a few pounds within a single day, so a daily reading is mostly weather. Average across a week and compare weeks.

When the question does not apply

During pregnancy the adult band is set aside and expected gain replaces it. Before age 20, weight is read as a percentile for age and sex rather than against a fixed range. And in trained athletes, height and weight cannot separate muscle from fat, so a high reading often describes the training rather than a risk.

For the range at your exact height and the history behind the phrase “ideal weight”, see the ideal weight calculator; for your current number against the same cutoffs, the BMI calculator.

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