How Much Should I Weigh for my Height?

Your body’s ideal proportion of body fat according to your height is a component of the Body Mass Index (BMI). These characteristics, along with your age and gender, are the most commonly used information for determining your ideal weight. Some BMI charts do indeed take this information into account, but others may omit one or more of the criteria, especially age and gender. The resulting BMI can be a helpful number to guide you through your weight loss, although using more specific information about you provides similarly specific information about how much body fat you should be carrying while remaining healthy.

BMI calculator from here

Why Body Mass Index (BMI) Is So Important

Having a high BMI is an indication that you have too much body fat in proportion to your size, gender and age. Although a BMI is not specifically used to diagnose obesity, it provides a fairly accurate picture of your overall health. Obesity is one of the most dangerous, and preventable, health conditions, although it does not directly cause any specific health problem. Instead, being obese, which means having a BMI that is too high according to height/weight charts, indicates that you are at significantly higher risk of developing chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes.

Age, Gender, Physical Fitness and Weight Versus Height

Your BMI ideally is a product of calculations that include your age, gender, height and even your ethnicity. although you don’t need all of these characteristics to get a rough estimate. Women will nearly always have a higher percentage than men, especially during their childbearing years when additional fat stores can be used for protection and support during pregnancy. As you age, your body fat percentage also increases, due to decreased physical activity as well as normal changes associated with aging. Athletes may actually appear to have too much body fat according to some height/weight charts, because their muscularly dense bodies weigh more than a non-athlete of the same size and height. It’s important to understand that having a high BMI according to any chart may not necessarily reflect your level of fitness or health, they are merely overarching indicators.

How Much Should I Weigh, According to My Height?

Adults ages 20 years and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should have a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9. Your BMI can be calculated by using an online too such as this one:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_BMI/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html

Using a height/weight chart can also help you determine roughly if you are overweight or your weight is too high for someone of your height. For women, the base weight is 115 pounds, which corresponds with a base height of 4’10″. For men, the base weight is 134 pounds at a base height of 5’1″. For each additional inch of height, both men and women should add approximately 3 pounds of weight. This means that a woman who is 5’2″ tall should ideally weigh approximately 125 pounds and a man of the same height should weigh 137 pounds. This can provide you with a rough estimate of what you should weigh but keep in mind that individuals who have more muscle mass may weight far more than this and still have a significantly low percentage of body fat.