Healthy Weight Calculator

1. How do we calculate healthy weight?
2. Benefits of maintaining healthy weight

    How do we calculate healthy weight?

Our healthy weight calculator uses the BMI (body mass index) as a basis for the calculation. Since BMI is calculated only using weight (mass) and height, if you input your height we calculate range of healthy weight values in your chosen metric (pounds or kg).

Due to way BMI is calculated, this calculator might not be suitable for athletes, especially in disciplines that require a very low body fat percentage and high muscle mass, such as body building, weight-lifting, professional football, heavyweight boxers or wrestlers. You should also remember that optimum body fat and body weight on an individual level is... highly individual.

In answering a question like "How much should I weight for my age and height?" or "How do I determine my healthy weight?" you should take into account your goals, including athletic goals. The above calculation is just a good first step in determining your healthy body weight or desirable weight range.

    Benefits of maintaining healthy weight

Since BMI is curvilinearly related to all-cause mortality, knowing your healthy weight target and aiming to achieve it is a good way to reduce your risk of a variety of serious and lethal diseases, like cardiovascular ones, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, degenerative arthritis, gallstones, neural birth defect, sleep apnea, and breathing problems. Of course, it is reducing relative risk, so if you have some predisposition or inherited weaknesses, you might still be at higher risk than the general population despite a healthy weight.

Graph - weight and health risks

The graph shows relationship between being overweight or obese according to BMI measures and relative risk of different diseases and highlights the importance of keeping a healthy weight through diet and exercise.

* some health risks are calculated differently than others. Risk of death is versus BMI < 19, risk of type II diabetes is versus BMI < 22-23, high blood pressure vs BMI < 23, arthritis and gallstones are vs. BMI < 24, neural birth defects vs 19-27. This is because the data comes from different studies.

While these are correlations, achieving a healthy body weight seems likely to have significant health benefits. Medical testing through a proper randomized controlled trial of such a hypothesis will likely be ruled out by an ethical commitee.

Graph - BMI and type II diabetes

Type II diabetes and its relationship to body mass index needed to be plotted separately due to the extremely high increases of relative risk per point - reaching 50 times increased relative risk at BMI 33-35.

The data for both graphs is from reference 2 from the NCHS.

Having a healthier weight is, of course, also positive for overall quality of life, so regardless of particular risks you should consider maintaining your weight in as reasonable boundaries as your situation allows. Our calculator is just the first step in getting to your desirable body weight (goal body weight).