Ideal Weight Calculator

Each was fit by a different researcher in a different decade with different reference data — Hamwi in 1964 from clinical rules of thumb, Devine in 1974 for drug dosing, Robinson and Miller in 1983 as statistical refits. They agree near average heights and diverge at the tall and short ends, where their per-inch slopes differ most. The spread between them is the honest error bar: 'ideal weight' was never one number.

Medication dosing. Devine's equation exists because some drugs distribute through lean tissue rather than total body weight, so hospitals needed a standardized lean-body estimate from height — and it's still used for exactly that today. Their spread into diet culture as body ideals was repurposing, not science. That origin explains their blind spots: a dosing formula never needed to care about muscle mass or frame size.

Quite possibly not. The formulas and BMI both measure weight against height with no idea what the weight is made of, so muscular people routinely register 'over' while carrying healthy or low body fat. If that's your situation, body composition is the measurement that answers the actual question — the body fat calculator estimates it, and waist circumference is a decent low-tech proxy. Performance and bloodwork beat the scale as health signals.

There's no evidence the middle beats other points inside the healthy range — the range is wide precisely because healthy weights genuinely vary with build. A more useful goal than a number: a weight you can maintain without white-knuckling, at which you feel strong and your health markers are good. If you're outside the range and want to move toward it, the calorie deficit calculator does the planning math at a sustainable pace.