Ideal Weight for 5 ft 11 in — 133 to 179 lb

At 5 ft 11 in the healthy weight band is 133 to 179 lb (about 60 to 81 kg), overweight starts at 180 lb and obesity at 216 lb. The band is 46 pounds wide — ten pounds wider than at 5 ft 3 in, because the 18.5-to-24.9 spread is multiplied by height squared.

Enter 180 for 5 ft 11 in; the field is in centimeters.

The arithmetic for 71 inches

Seventy-one inches squared is 5,041, and weight = BMI × 5,041 ÷ 703:

BMI	Weight at 5 ft 11 in
18.5	132.7 lb → 133
22.0	157.7 lb
24.9	178.6 lb → 179
25.0	179.3 lb → 180
30.0	215.1 lb → 216

This is the height where the formulas disagree most

Formula	Men	Women
Miller (1983)	158 lb	150 lb
Robinson (1983)	161 lb	149 lb
Devine (1974)	166 lb	156 lb
Hamwi (1964)	172 lb	155 lb

Fourteen pounds separate the highest and lowest answer for the same man — at 5 ft 3 in the same four equations sit within nine. They also drift in opposite directions: Hamwi’s number is a BMI of 22.0 at 5 ft 3 in and 24.0 here, while Miller’s goes the other way, from 23.6 down to 22.0.

Peterson and colleagues documented the cause in 2016: the older equations were straight lines fitted to insurance tables, so they overestimate at tall heights and underestimate at short ones. Their replacement stays aligned with BMI at every height, and in US units it reads weight (lb) = 5 × BMI + (BMI ÷ 5) × (height − 60 in) — which at 71 inches and BMI 22 gives 158 lb.

A high reading here is often muscle

The overweight line at this height, 180 lb, is a weight plenty of trained men carry with low body fat. BMI cannot separate lean mass from fat mass, and at 5 ft 11 in that limitation shows up more than at shorter heights simply because more men in that range lift.

The tell is not the scale, it is the tape measure. Abdominal fat is what the risk data is about, and the NHLBI pairs its BMI ranges with a waist threshold of 40 inches for men and 35 for women. A man at 190 lb with a 33-inch waist and a man at 190 lb with a 42-inch waist read identically on this page and are not in the same situation. The comparison between BMI and body fat percentage is where that difference lives.

Reading the distance, not just the side

If your weight is outside the band, the useful figure is how far outside. Six pounds over 179 is noise on a bathroom scale; forty pounds over is a different conversation, and 216 lb crosses into the obesity range at this height. Either way the number is a screen. Run your exact figure through the BMI calculator, and for what the phrase “ideal weight” is actually built on, see the ideal weight calculator.

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