Healthy Weight for Height

Find your healthy weight for height by first finding your height in inches along the top row, and then go down until you intersect with your weight which is found in the far left column. The number in black is your BMI. The number in red is the number of calories to maintain weight.

If you find that you are too heavy or too light, you can use the chart to find out how many calories you should be eating. Once again start with your height in the top row. Go down until you see a BMI that you like (usually in blue-gray a 19,20,21,22,23, or 24.) The number in red will be how many calories you need to consume to maintain that bmi or weight. If you want to lose weight, consume about 250 calories less than what is found in red for your goal weight. If you want to gain weight, eat about 250 calories more than the number in red for your goal weight.

If the chart is too much to digest right now, why not save it as a pdf file to study later. healthy weight for height chart (pdf)

This technique for losing weight came from the book Just Tell Me What to Eat!: The Delicious 6-Week Weight Loss Plan for the Real World

In his book Dr. Timothy S. Harlan says this about losing weight: "Understanding the number of calories you consume vs. the amount you burn is the single most important step in losing weight. The most up-to-date research shows that consuming fewer calories is the only way to lose weight.I also want you to learn to identify better nutritional-quality calories, because being healthy is partly about weight loss and partly about the type of food you eat."

To reach a healthy weight for height, you can also exercise, but be careful not to overestimate how many calories you are burning. Dr Harlan reiterates:

"To lose about 1/2 pound each week, you'll need to eat 250 calories less than your baseline caloric needs (number in red)every day. So if you should weigh 145 pounds, you'll need to eat about 1,350 calories per day (1595 - 250 = 1,350) to lose weight. (You can do this by eating 1,595 calories per day and burning those 250 calories by exercising-and you should-as I mentioned in the indroduction."