Ideal Weight Calculator

Four formulas at 165 cm

Enter sex at birth and height, in centimetres or total inches. That is all the formulas take, which is the first thing to know about them: they do not care about your age, your frame, your waist or how much you lift.

All four have the same shape. A starting weight at five feet (152.4 cm), plus a fixed amount for every inch above that.

Formula	Male	Female
Hamwi (1964)	48.0 kg + 2.7 kg per inch	45.5 kg + 2.2 kg per inch
Devine (1974)	50.0 kg + 2.3 kg per inch	45.5 kg + 2.3 kg per inch
Robinson (1983)	52.0 kg + 1.9 kg per inch	49.0 kg + 1.7 kg per inch
Miller (1983)	56.2 kg + 1.41 kg per inch	53.1 kg + 1.36 kg per inch

The default is a man of 165 cm, which is 64.96 inches, or 4.96 inches over five feet.

Devine   = 50.0 + 2.3  × 4.96 = 61.4 kg
Robinson = 52.0 + 1.9  × 4.96 = 61.4 kg
Miller   = 56.2 + 1.41 × 4.96 = 63.2 kg
Hamwi    = 48.0 + 2.7  × 4.96 = 61.4 kg

Average of the four	61.9 kg
Devine (1974)	61.4 kg
Robinson (1983)	61.4 kg
Miller (1983)	63.2 kg
Hamwi (1964)	61.4 kg
Healthy BMI range (WHO)	50.4 kg – 67.8 kg

Three of the four land on the same 61.4 kg. That is not agreement, it is geometry: at 165 cm you are only five inches above the anchor point, so the different per-inch rates have not had room to pull apart. Run the same man at 180 cm and the formulas spread from 71.5 kg (Miller) to 77.3 kg (Hamwi), nearly six kilos, for the same person. A woman of 155 cm gets 47.8 to 54.5 kg, averaging 50.2.

The healthy BMI range, 50.4 to 67.8 kg for this height, is 17 kilos wide. The formulas cover under two. That gap is the most honest thing on the page.

Built on Western patients, applied to Indian bodies

None of these was written to tell a person what to weigh.

Hamwi’s 1964 rule was a quick estimate for insulin dosing in diabetics. Devine’s 1974 formula was for working out gentamicin doses in hospital, and it is still what pharmacists use for “ideal body weight” when a drug is dosed on lean mass. Robinson and Miller, both 1983, were attempts to fit the Metropolitan Life insurance height-weight tables more closely. Every one of them came out of an American clinical or actuarial population.

Nobody validated them on Indians, and the Indian data pulls the other way. At the same weight and height an Indian adult carries more fat and less muscle than the people in those tables, which is why ICMR uses a BMI cut-off of 23 for overweight rather than 25. Under that Indian cut-off the healthy range at 165 cm tops out at 62.3 kg, not 67.8. So the “ideal” 61.4 kg from a 1974 American formula sits right against the Indian ceiling, not comfortably in the middle of it.

That changes how to read the number. For a Western reader the formula weight is a midpoint. For an Indian reader it is closer to an upper bound, with the waist measurement (90 cm for men, 80 cm for women) deciding whether the kilos above it are a problem.

Where an Indian actually meets a height-weight table

Almost nobody in India is asked to hit an ideal weight except at a recruitment medical. There the tables are real, printed in the notification, and they are not any of the four above.

The Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the CAPF forces (CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP), state police and the RPF each publish their own standards. The Army’s medical standards run a height-weight table by age band and allow a tolerance of about 10 percent either side of the table figure; being under the table is as much a rejection as being over, and underweight candidates from rural districts are turned away every cycle for it. The Air Force and Navy check BMI alongside the table. Police notifications more often specify height and chest, with weight in some states and not others.

The correct move before any of these is to read the medical annexure of that specific notification, weigh yourself on a proper scale in the morning, and if you are outside the tolerance, work on it three months out, not three days. A formula from 1974 will not tell you what the recruiting medical officer’s table says. Beyond recruitment, the only other place a table gets applied to you is an insurer’s medical, and that uses BMI, not ideal weight.

Using the number without being ruled by it

What I would actually do with this page: note the average, note the BMI range, and then take a tape to the waist.

A 165 cm man at 66 kg is above every formula here and inside the WHO range. If his waist is 84 cm and he plays football twice a week, he is fine, and the formula is describing someone with less muscle than him. If his waist is 96 cm, he is not fine, and he was not fine at 62 kg either. The body fat calculator makes that distinction with the same tape; the BMI calculator on the Indian scale shows where the cut-offs fall for your height.

A few more things the formulas ignore:

• Frame. A broad-shouldered Punjabi and a slight Tamil man of the same height get the same 61.4 kg. Wrist circumference is the old proxy for frame; it is crude but it is more than the formula uses.
• Age. Past 60 a few kilos above the formula weight goes with better outcomes, not worse.
• Women. All four start lower for women and most add less per inch. At 165 cm the female figures run 56.4 to 59.8 kg against 61.4 to 63.2 for a man. The BMI range does not distinguish because it is height only.
• Below five feet. The formulas extrapolate downward from their anchor and stop being sensible under about 150 cm, which affects a good number of Indian women. Use the BMI range there instead.

If the conclusion is that you want to move towards the range, the calorie calculator turns the gap into a daily target at a rate that will not wreck you.