Ideal body weight calculator
See the weight the Devine equation returns for your height and sex, and the adjusted body weight used alongside it. Both are estimates clinicians use to dose medications, not goals.
Medically reviewed by Kevin Brandstetter, M.D.Updated September 22, 2026
Optional. Adds adjusted body weight when it is above the Devine weight.
Weight the Devine equation returns
Enter your sex and height
The Devine weight appears here once both are filled in.
A calculator, not a diagnosis.
Despite its name, ideal body weight is a dosing estimate from a formula, and it says nothing about the right weight for you. It ignores body composition, muscle, frame, pregnancy, and health, and it describes groups of people rather than any one person. This tool is for adults. A licensed clinician decides which weight a dose is based on.
Methodology
- How this is calculated
- The Devine equation starts at 50 kg for the male equation or 45.5 kg for the female one at a height of five feet, and adds 2.3 kg for each inch above five feet. Adjusted body weight is the Devine weight plus 0.4 times the amount by which actual weight is above it, and it is shown only when actual weight is above the Devine weight. Both are shown to one decimal in the unit you chose.
- Where the data comes from
- McCarron MM, Devine BJ. Clinical pharmacy: case studies. Case number 25: gentamicin therapy. Drug Intell Clin Pharm. 1974;8(11):650-655, usually cited as Devine's, a publication about dosing the antibiotic gentamicin. The 0.4 factor for adjusted body weight traces to Bauer LA, Edwards WA, Dellinger EP, Simonowitz DA. Influence of weight on aminoglycoside pharmacokinetics in normal weight and morbidly obese patients. Eur J Clin Pharmacol. 1983;24(5):643-647, a study of how the aminoglycoside antibiotics spread through the body in people with obesity.
- Last updated
- September 22, 2026
- What this does not account for
- Heights below five feet, where Devine published no equation and this tool shows no number. Body composition, muscle mass, frame, pregnancy, and the medication in question, which decides whether a clinician uses actual, ideal, or adjusted weight at all.
What these numbers are for
Devine published this equation in 1974 to dose gentamicin, an antibiotic whose safe dose depends on body size. Some drugs spread mostly into lean tissue, so dosing them on total weight in a larger person can overshoot. The weight this equation returns gives a clinician a height-based figure to dose on instead.
Adjusted body weight sits between the two. Bauer and colleagues studied how aminoglycoside antibiotics distribute in people with obesity, and the 0.4 factor traced to that work adds back part of the weight above the Devine figure. Clinicians use it for some antibiotics and, in some kidney calculations, for estimating clearance.
Why the word ideal is misleading
The name is historical. The weight this equation returns is not a recommendation, and it is not a number to aim for. It is arithmetic on height for a dosing calculation, which is why this page shows it next to the formula it comes from and not next to a category.
Below five feet
Devine wrote the equation as a base weight at five feet plus an amount for each inch above it. Below five feet the same arithmetic would be an extrapolation Devine did not publish, so this tool says so instead of printing a number.
Nothing here is stored
Your answers stay in your browser. They are not sent to Temi, not saved, not attached to you, and not recorded in any session replay, and closing the tab clears them. Temi knows only that someone opened this tool, the same thing it knows about every page.
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