A quick way to figure out your ideal weight!

Per this calculator, my lean body mass is 124. I used the livestrong.com to figure out my body fat. If I did everything correctly, it spit out 13 %. I'm amazed to have that much body fat. I sure though, I had under 10 %. Boooohooo... No figure competition for me any time soon... If I lose any more weight, I'd be considered undeweight (BMI), ( I already am, if one considers, I am a large frame).

According to your measurements - weight of 163 pounds and height of 5' 5", your lean body mass is estimated to be 108.92 . Since the ideal body fat percentage for [wo]men is 22%, your ideal lean body weight is 97.93 pounds.



That's me at about 108 lbs on the vodka and sunflower seed diet. People told me I looked like death; I can only imagine what I'd look like ten pounds thinner.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I'm 5'5", 128 pounds this morning, age 66.

Using all the calculators I found linked in this thread, I got BF% estimates ranging from obese (35%) to something one site describes as "fitness" (24.3%). Most were in the 24%-25% range. My BIA scale (set on it's "more active" setting) estimated 23.8%. Visually, I suspect something just around/under 25% is probably right: My upper body is thin-looking (teens, maybe, even), lower body below ribcage is where the remaining fat still hangs out (high 20s % kind of appearance, at least). IMO, I'm at an OK weight, don't know or care about ideal. (FWIW, that's the actual me in my profile photo.) My doctors are fine with my weight, health-wise (yes, I ask).

The one BF calculator that asked for age was the one that estimated 35%. Since muscle loss with aging is an average (common) thing to happen, maybe the other calculators skew lower than realistic for average older people? Or maybe there are just low expectations of older people? (Statistically speaking, those last two sentences are somewhat equivalent.)

The BMICalculator.net site had an "ideal weight" estimator (link in details below) that applies various research-based estimates. Those produced a range of recommendations from 122 to 132 pounds. Normal BMI range for me would be 111 to just under 150 pounds.

Here's the thing (and I know it's a minority report): If we're not anywhere near our ideal weight, it doesn't much matter what our ideal weight is. What mostly matters is the needed direction of change.

Weight gain or loss doesn't rely on knowing goal weight. (Yeah, weight loss rate may matter somewhat based on target weight, because we should lose slower when getting close, but it's fine to be approximate.

Ditto for using ideal/goal weight to estimate things like protein needs: The difference of being off a few pounds of bodyweight is arithmetically trivial to the end result for nearly all of us.)

Once we get near our ideal weight, assuming we don't have serious body dysmorphia, we probably will be able to tell what our subjective ideal weight will be, or pretty close guess.

At around that same point, it might make sense to talk with our doctor(s) and ask where s/he thinks our healthy weight range is, given our personal health history and body configuration (among other things). Ask the question of the doctor when we're materially over/underweight, s/he will quite probably parrot the normal BMI range, because it's hard to tell what's ideal when it isn't even close.

The reason that frame size matters to healthy weight, BTW, isn't the weight of the skeleton, as a PP suggested. Yes, skeletal weight doesn't vary hugely between similar-height humans of the same sex/gender. What matters is this: Someone who is lightly built - narrow hips, narrow shoulders, small head/hands/fingers, etc. - requires geometrically less skin, healthy small fat layers, etc., to wrap around that smaller frame, as compared with someone who has wide hips, wide shoulders, big head/hands/shoulders, etc. Geometrically more skin and fat and connective tissue (etc.) requires meaningful extra bodyweight.

That's without even getting into the effect of breast size in women. Even as a very non-large-breasted woman (even while obese), IIRC mine weighed around 4 pounds according to the post mastectomy pathology report. A large-breasted woman will carry a meaningful amount of weight in her breasts, even at a healthy weight, and that, too, has a meaningful effect on ideal body weight. None of these calculators asked about that, which oughta give some notion of how male-centric these calculators are, even when they ask about sex/gender.

Details of the calculator results for me are in the spoiler, if anyone wants a reason to eye-roll.

Calculators:

https://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/lean-body-mass/
LBM: 96.57 pounds
Ideal LBM at 22% BF: 97.93 pounds
Current BF%: 24.6%

https://www.healthyforms.com/helpful-tools/body-fat-percentage.php

LBM: 83.2 pounds
Ideal LBM: 96 to 102.4 (based on 20-25% LBM recommendation)
Current BF%: 35%
(Hint at difference: This one asked my age, which is 66.)

https://www.bizcalcs.com/lean-body-mass/

LBM: 97 pounds
Ideal LBM: Not estimated
Current BF%: 24%

https://www.bmi-calculator.net/body-fat-calculator/

LBM: 95.2
Ideal LBM: Not estimated
Current BF%: 25.62%

Same site's ideal weight calculator, which has multiple formulas, at:
https://www.bmi-calculator.net/ideal-weight-calculator/

Range of 122-132.21 from the research-based formulas
Range of 111.17-150.23 based on BMI range

Navy calculator at https://www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html
LBM: 96.8 pounds
Ideal LBM: Not estimated
Current BF%: 24.3%

My BIA scale, this morning (set on the "more active" setting, BTW):

LBM: 97.536 pounds
Ideal LBM: Not estimated
Current BF%: 23.8%

It's possible that I have some numerical typos in there someplace, because gosh that's a lot of numbers. Close enough.