What Is a Healthy Weight for My Height?

The short answer: a range, not a number

For most adults, a healthy weight means a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9. BMI is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in metres, squared. Turn that around and every height gets a weight range, not a single target.

I used to chase a single number myself. I had 65 kg in my head as "the" weight, and anything above it felt like failure. That is nonsense, honestly. At 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm), healthy runs from about 50 to 68 kg. At 5 feet 7 inches, 53 to 72 kg. At 5 feet 9 inches, 57 to 76 kg.

So ask not "what should I weigh?" but "am I inside my range, and how far out am I?" Our guide on how to read a BMI chart walks through the cutoffs one by one.

Find your range in 60 seconds

Do this now, with your real numbers. Measure your height barefoot, back against a wall. Weigh yourself in the morning, before breakfast, for the most consistent reading. Then put both numbers into our BMI calculator. It gives you your BMI and your category on the spot, and nothing leaves your browser.

Want to check the maths by hand? Take a person who is 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm) and weighs 78 kg. Square the height: 1.68 times 1.68 is 2.82. Divide: 78 divided by 2.82 is 27.6, in the overweight band, which starts at 25. The top of their healthy range is 24.9 times 2.82, about 70 kg. So the gap is 8 kg. A specific number, not just a label.

Prefer watching? This short explainer covers healthy BMI in plain language.

What if you land just outside the range?

Being 2 kg outside your range and 20 kg outside it are completely different situations, and most charts treat them the same. They should not.

If you are a little outside, aim for the nearest edge, not the middle. That 78 kg person does not need to reach 61 kg, the middle of their 52 to 70 kg range. They need to reach 70 kg. Same logic in reverse if you are underweight: reach the bottom edge first.

How fast? About 0.5 kg a week is a realistic, sustainable pace for most people. At that pace, an 8 kg gap takes around 16 weeks. Crash diets that drop weight fast tend to hand it straight back. Small daily changes beat heroic weeks: walk more, cut the sugary drinks, eat a bit less at dinner. Boring advice. It works because you can actually keep doing it.

One exception, and it matters: if you are well outside the range, or you have diabetes, heart trouble, or another health condition, talk to a doctor before changing your weight. A calculator gives you a number. A doctor sees the rest of you.

The second check most charts skip

Almost every top result for this topic hands you a table and stops. None of them tell you to check your waist. BMI does not know where your fat sits, and belly fat carries more risk than fat elsewhere.

Wrap a tape measure around your waist just above your hip bones. Breathe out normally, do not suck in. Your waist should be less than half your height. At 5 feet 6 inches (66 inches), that means under 33 inches. In metric: 168 cm tall means a waist under 84 cm.

What if your BMI is healthy but your waist is over? That is worth a conversation with your doctor, even though the chart says you are fine. And if your BMI is high but you lift weights and your waist is fine, you might just be muscular. BMI famously gets athletes wrong, which is why we wrote why BMI says athletes are overweight. Two numbers beat one, every time.

Get your exact number with the BMI calculator

Grab your height and weight, open the BMI calculator, and get your number and your range in under a minute. Then do the waist check, and you have got a fuller picture than any single chart gives you. If you want to dig deeper, our what your BMI actually means guide explains the formula, and the calculator sits with our other free calculators. No signup, no tracking, nothing uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

What is a healthy weight for someone who is 5 feet 7 inches tall?

At 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm), the healthy range is about 53 to 72 kg (118 to 159 lb), from a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9.

Is there one ideal weight for my height?

No. A healthy weight is a range, not a single number. At 5 feet 7 inches the range spans about 19 kg.

What should I do if I am just outside the healthy range?

Aim for the nearest edge first, not the middle. If you are 8 kg above the top, losing 8 kg gets you back inside it, at about 0.5 kg per week, and a doctor can help if you have health conditions.

Does BMI work for everyone?

Not for everyone. BMI cannot tell muscle apart from fat, so very muscular people can score high with little body fat. It also works less well for children, pregnant people, and older adults. The waist check is a useful second test.