What Is Your Ideal Healthy Weight?

If you want to know what the ideal healthy weight is for anyone, you will be slightly disappointed. There is no concrete answer that works for all people in all situations. If you are eighteen years old, there is not a definite weight that you should shoot for; the same can be said if you are sixty years old. However, there are different ways to figure this out based on the various factors that make everyone unique. Even then, you might not find a concrete answer, but this can help you to get much closer to one than anything else.

What you will want to do is to look for a BMI chart. BMI stands for Body Mass Index. This will show you what you should ideally weigh depending on your gender and your height. You will see the way that the grid is laid out and you will be able to find your own statistics on it. The line slopes upward as it crosses the grid because a person who is taller is allowed to weigh more. If you are five feet and two inches tall, you should weigh much less than a person who is six feet and three inches tall, even if you are the same gender and the same age. Both of you will be healthy even though you do not weigh the same amount.

You also need to factor your body shape into the equation. If you are muscular, you will weigh more even if you are shorter. This is because muscle weighs more than fat. It is all right for you to weigh "too much" if your shoulders are broad with muscle and your waist is still fit. You need to put your belt size into the equation to figure this out, and the chart will be adjusted accordingly. This has to be done to accommodate those who are athletic and who lift weights.

As you can see, there are many factors that play into how much you should weigh, so it does no good to measure yourself against your friends. This can help you in a very general sense, but you should not find out how much one of your friends weighs and then try to get yourself to the same place. If your friend is taller or more muscular, he or she will be healthy at a very different weight than you.