To find out your ideal weight for your height and age, you need to calculate your body mass index, known as BMI. The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, or NHLBI, explains that your BMI measures your percentage of body fat based on your height and gender. It calculates if you're underweight, an ideal weight, overweight or obese. BMI is also used to determine the status of your health.
How to Calculate Your BMI
Body mass index became the international standard for determining obesity in the 1980's. In the 1990's in effort to encourage the public to eat healthy and exercise regularly, the government introduced the BMI calculator.
You can calculate your BMI by dividing your weight by your height in inches. Multiply the answer again by your height in inches. Multiply that answer by 703.
The official formula used by the National Institutes of Health for calculating BMI looks like this: BMI = ( Weight in Pounds / ( Height in inches ) x ( Height in inches ) ) x 703
BMI Categories
Once your BMI is computed, you can find out if your weight is ideal. If your BMI is ranked between 18.5 and 24.9, you're considered normal weight, or ideal weight, for your height and gender. If your BMI is below 18.5, you are considered underweight; 25 and over, you're either overweight of obese--three different categories of weights that are not ideal because of the possible health implications that come with being underweight and overweight.
Adults, Weight and Age
For adults, age does not play a large part in calculating a BMI. Even though height and weight changes as a person ages, you won't find age in many BMI calculators and it's not in the official formula. This affects women, especially, since women tend to gain weight in their 20s through to their 50s. Between the ages of 50 and 60, according to Steven B. Halls, M.D., women's weight begins to decrease. Men's BMI, however, remains much more steady as they age.
Kids and Age
When calculating an ideal weight for teens and kids, age plays a very big role. Because of growth and puberty, according to KidsHealth, no one develops on the same schedule. When figuring out BMI for kids, they're put on a percentile chart based on age and gender rather than placed in one of four categories like adults.
Considerations
Calculating your BMI is a good thing if you want to get an idea if you are in a healthy weight range. It is not always the best measure for everyone, however.
FueltheMind.com, a health and fitness website, explains that a BMI formula does not take into account if you are bodybuilder or chain-smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. The first may land in the obese range when he clearly is not obese and the latter may be categorized as an ideal weight, which she may be, but just as unhealthy as a person who is obese.
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