Ideal Weight for Women — Range by Height

There is no separate healthy weight range for women in US guidance. The NHLBI and the NIDDK both define healthy weight as a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 for all adults, so a woman of 5 ft 4 in and a man of 5 ft 4 in get the identical band: 108 to 145 lb.

The band at women’s common heights

Height	Healthy weight	Devine’s single number
5 ft 0 in	95–128 lb	100 lb
5 ft 2 in	102–136 lb	110 lb
5 ft 3 in	105–141 lb	116 lb
5 ft 4 in	108–145 lb	121 lb
5 ft 5 in	112–150 lb	126 lb
5 ft 6 in	115–154 lb	131 lb
5 ft 7 in	119–159 lb	136 lb
5 ft 8 in	122–164 lb	141 lb

Notice where the formula puts you. At 5 ft 0 in, Devine’s “ideal” of 100 lb is a BMI of 19.5 — five pounds from the underweight line and twenty-eight pounds below the top of the healthy band. By 5 ft 8 in the same formula has drifted up to a BMI of 21.4. A single number that shifts its own meaning across eight inches of height is not describing health; it is describing a straight line drawn through old data.

Every formula subtracts the same ten pounds

Devine takes 4.5 kg off the male baseline for women and then uses an identical slope of 2.3 kg per inch. Hamwi, Robinson and Miller all do a version of the same thing. That is a constant, not a physiological adjustment — if the difference reflected body composition it would scale with size, and it does not.

Pai and Paloucek traced the constant to Metropolitan Life height–weight tables, which published men’s and women’s columns separately because that is how insurers had collected them. Robinson’s 1983 paper says openly that its equations are regressions on those tables. The sex term is an inherited formatting decision from an actuarial document.

The one place US weight guidance genuinely does differ by sex is the waist threshold: the NHLBI flags 35 inches for women against 40 for men.

Life stages the band does not cover

• Across the menstrual cycle, fluid shifts move the scale without moving body fat. Weigh on the same cycle day, or use a monthly average, before reading a trend into it.
• In pregnancy, the adult band is set aside entirely. What matters is the BMI you had before conceiving and how much you have gained since — see ideal weight during pregnancy.
• After menopause, fat tends to redistribute toward the abdomen even when the scale does not move. That is precisely the change BMI cannot see and the tape measure can.

Where to look after the band

If your weight sits inside 18.5 to 24.9 and you still want a fuller picture, waist size and body fat percentage add what height and weight cannot. For the same reading in men, see ideal weight for men; for the arithmetic behind every row above, the ideal weight calculator.

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