Reference Weight Calculator
A neutral reference weight range for your height, not a number to chase.
Fill in the form and your result lands here.
Learn the details
These numbers come from four older clinical formulas (Devine 1974, Robinson 1983, Miller 1983, Hamwi 1964) that estimate a weight range from height and sex. They were built for medication dosing, which is why you see a range instead of a single number.
The phrase “ideal weight” oversells what these formulas actually do. They are old clinical shorthand for estimating a starting weight from height, and none of them were ever meant to be a target anyone hits. Here is where they came from and how much to read into them.
Where these formulas came from
The best known of the four is Devine, published in 1974, and it was written to help clinicians dose medication. Some drugs distribute through lean tissue rather than total body mass, so pharmacists needed a quick height-based estimate to work from at the bedside. Hamwi came a decade earlier out of diabetes care, as a rule of thumb for setting a starting point in a diet plan. Robinson and Miller, both from 1983, are revisions of the same idea with the numbers nudged to fit different reference data. All four share one shape: a base weight at five feet, plus a fixed amount for every inch above it. Not one of them was built to describe how a body should look.
Why they disagree
Each author picked a different base and a different per-inch step, so the four answers fan out as height increases. That spread is the most useful thing on this page. If four sets of experienced clinicians working from the same input landed on four different numbers, the honest conclusion is that no single number was ever there to find. What exists is a band, and the band is wider than the calculator alone suggests.
A worked example
Take a man at 5 foot 10, which is ten inches above the five foot anchor. Devine adds 2.3 kg per inch to a 50 kg base and lands at 73 kg, about 161 pounds. Robinson gives 71 kg, roughly 157 pounds. Miller gives 70.3 kg, near 155 pounds. Hamwi, the steepest of the four, gives 75 kg, about 165 pounds. Same man, same height, ten pounds of disagreement, and that is before anything about him as a person enters the math.
What the formulas cannot see
Height and sex are the only inputs. These equations do not know your frame or bone structure, how much muscle you carry, what you eat, how you train, your age, your ancestry, or anything about your health history. Two people at the same height can be healthy at genuinely different weights, and a lifter will often sit well above any of these numbers while being in excellent shape. Read the output as a rough reference band that came from a dosing chart, not as a line you are on the wrong side of.
What I would read instead
If the real question is how you look, move, and feel, composition tells you far more than total weight. Your body fat percentage and your lean body mass separate muscle from fat, which the scale never does, and BMI gives you the same population-level screening view with its own known limits. Alongside those, watch whether your lifts are climbing, your energy holds up, and your clothes fit the way you want. If a weight question is worrying you, that belongs with a doctor, not a calculator.
Sources: Pai and Paloucek 2000, ideal body weight equations
A healthy body can sit above or below this range depending on muscle mass and frame, so read the whole range instead of zeroing in on the lowest number. For anything medical, talk to your doctor.