What’s a Healthy Weight?
In the past it was pretty easy to find tables of recommended healthy body weights. Not so much anymore. Most of the experts want you calculate your body mass index, recommending the healthy BMI range as 18.5 to 24.9. I recently spent an hour putting together a healthy weight range based on BMIs. Since I have many readers outside the U.S., I use both U.S. customary and metric numbers.
Metropolitan Life Insurance 
Company last published its ideal weight and height table in 1983. The US Department of Agriculture abondoned its 1995 healthy weight table by the turn of the century recommending BMI calculation instead. Of note is that the upper end of its weight ranges was a BMI of 25; the lower ends were all BMIs of 19.
Body Mass Index (BMI) is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared (kg/m2). A pound equals 454 kilograms. An inch equals 2.54 centimeters. There are 100 centimeters in one meter. Thus, a 5-foot, 4-inch woman (1.63 meters) weighing 200 pounds (91 kilograms) has a BMI of 34.2. Perhaps you’re starting to understand why this weight standard isn’t too popular yet.
To learn your own BMI but skip the math, use an online calculator.
To see if your BMI is in the healthy range of 18.5 to 24.9, find your height in the table below, then look to the healhy weight ranges to the right. Measure your height without shoes and weight without clothes.
Table of Healthy Weight Ranges Based On Body Mass Index: 18.5 to 24.9
Height Weight in lb Weight in kg
5’0” or 152 cm 95 - 128 43.0 - 58.0
5’1” or 155 cm 98 - 132 44.4 - 59.8
5’2” or 157 cm 101 - 137 45.8 - 62.1
5’3” or 160 cm 105 - 141 47.6 - 63.9
5’4” or 163 cm 108 - 146 48.9 - 66.2
5’5” or 165 mc 111 - 150 50.3 - 68.0
5’6” or 168 cm 115 - 155 52.0 - 70.3
5’7” or 170 cm 118 - 160 53.5 - 72.5
5’8” or 173 cm 122 - 164 55.3 - 74.3
5’9” or 175 cm 125 - 169 51.7 - 76.6
5’10” or 178 cm 129 - 174 58.5 - 78.9
5’11” or 180 cm 133 - 179 60.3 - 81.8
6’0” or 183 cm 137 - 184 62.1 - 83.4
6’1” or 185 cm 140 - 189 63.5 - 85.7
6’2” or 188 cm 144 - 195 65.3 - 88.4
6’3” or 191 cm 148 - 200 67.1 - 90.7
6’4” or 193 cm 152 - 205 68.9 - 92.9
BMIs between 25 and 29.9 designate “overweight” and accurately describe about 35 percent of the United States population.
A BMI of 30 or higher defines “obesity” and indicates high risk for poor health. About 30 percent of us are obese. At a BMI of 35 and above, incidence of death and disease increases sharply.
The BMI concept is helpful to researchers and obesity clinicians, but the number doesn’t mean much yet to the average person on the street and to many physicians. It should be used more widely. (I know, I know: it’s not perfect. Do you have a better, cheap, widely applicable standard?) Know your BMI. If it’s under 25, any excess fat you carry is unlikely to affect your health and longevity; your efforts to lose weight would be purely cosmetic.
August 1st, 2011 at 5:58 am
A “healthy weight” based on the BMI is a mathematical abstraction that I think is self defeating as an ideal as not all kinds fit the formula.I have never attained a recommended BMI despite my massive amount of marathon running in the past.
Does that mark me perverse?
As Keith Devlin has pointed out:
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html
“The BMI was formulated, by a mathematician, not a medical physician, to provide a simple, easy-to-apply mathematical formula to give a broad, society-level measure of weight issues. It has absolutely no scientific or medical basis. It is based purely on a crude statistical analysis. It measures a general society trend, it does not predict. Since the majority of people today (and in Quetelet’s time) lead fairly sedentary lives, and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them! Duh!
“But this is not science - it’s not even good statistics - and as a result it should not be accepted medical practice, to be regularly flouted as some magical mumbo jumbo and used as a basis for giving advice to patients. (For heavens sake, even seven times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s own Livestrong website provides a BMI calculator, despite the fact that the boss himself, when he first became a world champion cyclist - before chemotherapy for cancer took 20lbs off him - found himself classified as “overweight” by the wretched formula.)”
So you need to spare the angst , Steve — I go with waist measurement.
The same blog entry quotes a study, that suggests much greater leeway in regard to “healthy”:
“a study of 33,000 American adults, published recently in the American Journal of Public Health (Vol 96, No.1, January 2006, 173-178), showed that male life expectancy is greatest for BMIs of about 26 - overweight under the CDC’s rule, and equivalent to 24 lb extra for the typical man. For women, the study found an optimum BMI of about 23.5, about 7 lbs heavier than the CDC’s standard.”
So while BMI may be broad scale suggestive — of one wanted to be a enforced statistic — it aint a rule.
August 1st, 2011 at 6:00 am
I also point out that all the Greeks I know — in the second largest Greek city on earth — Melbourne Australia — who have lived a Mediterranean diet are short. Toby Jug types and stocky.
August 1st, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, Dave.
For older Americans, over 65, the longest lifespans are seen at BMI between 25 and 30.
For a quick and dirty assessment of potential lifespan and cardiovascular risk, the waist-hip ratio may beat BMI. Here’s my post about WHR:
http://diabeticmediterraneandiet.com/2011/07/18/waist-hip-ratio-how-to-determine-and-what-it-means/
-Steve