Where does your weight actually rank?
You know your weight to the pound and you've probably no idea where it puts you, because the only comparisons on offer are the people you happen to see and a BMI chart drawn up for populations rather than people. The CDC weighs a cross-section of the country on calibrated scales, which is a better yardstick. Enter your weight, height, age and sex, pick a country, and see how many adults like you weigh less. No judgment comes with it, only a position in the line. This calculator on Find The Norm uses CDC NHANES 2021 to 2023 data to rank your weight-for-age against the US and UK adult population by age and sex.
Tell us about you. Step 1 of 2.
Now your weight and country. Step 2 of 2.
Querying NHANES data…
Where does your height rank?
Height data for 200 countries, to set beside your weight.
What is the average weight by age in the US?
The median American man weighs 191.0 lbs (86.6 kg) and the median American woman 162.0 lbs (73.5 kg), according to the CDC's NHANES survey of adults aged 20 and over for August 2021 to August 2023, and those are medians, the weight of the person standing in the exact middle of the line, which matters on a curve as lopsided as this one. Both means sit higher, at 199.0 lbs and 171.8 lbs, because the heavy tail drags them up. Below, the first table gives the median by decade of age and the second gives the percentile cut-offs for all adults aged 20 and over, while the calculator reads your result from the table for your own age group, so it won't match the second table to the pound.
The middle 50% of US adult women weigh between 138 and 197 lbs, and the middle 50% of US adult men between 166 and 222 lbs.
| Age group | Women, median | Men, median |
|---|---|---|
| 20 to 29 | 151.9 | 184.5 |
| 30 to 39 | 165.3 | 192.0 |
| 40 to 49 | 164.8 | 195.0 |
| 50 to 59 | 173.0 | 193.5 |
| 60 to 69 | 163.8 | 191.7 |
| Percentile | Men (lbs / kg) | Women (lbs / kg) |
|---|---|---|
| 5th | 134 lbs / 61 kg | 112 lbs / 51 kg |
| 10th | 147 lbs / 67 kg | 121 lbs / 55 kg |
| 25th | 166 lbs / 75 kg | 138 lbs / 63 kg |
| 50th | 191 lbs / 87 kg | 162 lbs / 74 kg |
| 75th | 222 lbs / 101 kg | 197 lbs / 89 kg |
| 90th | 262 lbs / 119 kg | 236 lbs / 107 kg |
| 95th | 291 lbs / 132 kg | 263 lbs / 119 kg |
What is a typical weight for my age and height?
Somewhere inside the middle half of the second table for your sex, which runs 166 to 222 lbs for men and 138 to 197 lbs for women across adults aged 20 and over, though what counts as typical for your height is a different question, because weight on its own says nothing about how it's carried. A 180 lb person who is 6 ft tall and a 180 lb person who is 5 ft 4 in get the same weight percentile on this page and have very different bodies. Then there's the skew. On the men's table the gap from the 5th percentile to the median is 134 to 191 lbs, and from the median to the 95th it's 191 to 291, so the heavy tail runs far longer than the light one, and the same number of pounds above the middle moves you fewer percentile points than it would below it. You can see where your height sits with our height percentile calculator, and reading the two together tells you more than either alone.
How has average weight changed over time?
Upward, by a lot, in both countries this calculator covers, with the Health Survey for England recording mean male weight at 78.9 kg in 1993 and 86.2 kg in 2024, more than 7 kg added in three decades, while the US adult obesity rate (BMI 30+) reached 40.3% in August 2021 to August 2023, up from around 15% in 1976 to 1980. That drift is why your percentile has a date on it. The cut-offs here come from 2021 to 2023, and a weight that sat at the median in 1993 sits well below it now, so if you're measuring yourself against a figure you remember from years ago, you're comparing against a lighter country. Weight trends by age bracket are on the body statistics page.
Why does BMI have limitations?
Because it was built in the 19th century to describe populations, as a quick way of comparing groups of people on paper, and was never designed to say anything about one individual's health, so it breaks in predictable ways once you apply it to a single body with its own mix of muscle and fat. Four failures come up again and again.
- Muscle mass: Athletes and anyone carrying a lot of muscle score a high BMI without the body fat or the metabolic risk it's meant to flag.
- Ethnic variation: The thresholds were worked out mostly on people of European origin, and health risks can show up at lower BMI values in South Asian and East Asian populations, among others.
- Fat distribution: Fat around the organs is more metabolically active than fat under the skin, so two people with the same BMI can carry very different risk.
- Age: Body composition shifts with age even when the scales don't move, so the same BMI reading means something different at different stages of life.
The Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity (2025) proposed a definition of clinical obesity that looks past BMI to functional impairment and, where possible, direct measures of body fat. Growth charts for children and teens published by the CDC come from the same NHANES survey, and this page applies the same source to adults aged 20 and over. If you want the formula, it's weight in kg divided by height in m squared. Conditions consistently linked with obesity (BMI 30 or above) include type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, joint problems and certain cancers. For a body composition estimate that goes past a single number on the scale, the body fat percentage calculator uses validated circumference measurements.
Frequently asked questions
That share of people in your age and sex group weigh less than you. At the 60th percentile, 60% of people your age and sex weigh less and 40% weigh more. It's a position in a line, and this page ranks you against measured NHANES weights, so if you typed in a number you remember rather than one you've checked lately, bear in mind that people tend to remember themselves lighter.
No, and it was never meant to be. BMI is a screening tool for population studies, and it can't tell muscle from fat or see where the fat sits. Someone with a lot of muscle can carry a high BMI and no extra health risk, while someone with little muscle and a lot of fat around the organs can have a normal BMI and real metabolic risk. The body proportions calculator captures the waist ratios BMI misses.
Yes, by about 33 lbs for men. CDC/NCHS data puts mean weight for US men aged 20 to 74 at 166.3 lbs in 1960 to 1962 and 199.0 lbs in the August 2021 to August 2023 cycle. Women went from 140.2 lbs to 171.8 lbs over the same period. Weight trends by age bracket, alongside height and body fat, are compiled on the body statistics page.
It pushes you up the table without telling you why. Muscle is denser than fat, the same volume weighing about 18% more, so a muscular person with low body fat lands at a higher weight percentile than their fat mass alone would put them. Weight is a crude stand-in for what a body is made of, and that's the built-in limit of any weight-only comparison. The bench press strength calculator shows how strength compares at the same body weight.
Yes, by a long way. The US has one of the highest mean body weights of any rich country, with a mean adult BMI of about 29.5, a whisker under the clinical obesity threshold of 30, while Japanese adults average around 22 to 23. This calculator only knows the US and the UK, so the further your background is from those two populations, the less your percentile means.
Not very, and always in the same direction. Adults asked to state their weight come in 1 to 5 kg under what the scales say when researchers weigh them. Everything on this page comes from CDC/NCHS and NHS surveys that weighed people in person, with trained staff and standardised conditions, which is why your own guess may rank you lower than a fresh reading would.
Clinical guidance leans on BMI, with 18.5 to 24.9 the WHO's healthy range, though the Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity (2025) is blunt that BMI is a poor predictor for any one person. The lowest statistical risk for most people sits around a BMI of 21 to 23, shifting with age, sex, muscle and ethnicity. Waist-to-height ratio is increasingly used alongside it, with a ratio under 0.5 tied to lower cardiometabolic risk across populations. Our body fat percentage calculator adds the composition side.
Badly, and in a direction that undercuts the usual lecturing. In Puhl and Brownell's 2006 survey of 2,671 adults with overweight or obesity, doctors and family members were the most common sources of weight bias. And Sutin and Terracciano (2013) found adults who reported weight discrimination were about 2.5 times as likely to become obese four years later, even after accounting for their starting BMI. This page gives you a position in a distribution and nothing else.
Men in England average 86.2 kg (about 190 lbs) and women 73.0 kg (about 161 lbs), per the Health Survey for England 2024, up from 78.9 kg and 66.6 kg in 1993. Mean BMI across all adults was 27.8 kg per m², which puts the average adult in the overweight category, where it already sat at 25.8 in 1993. It climbs with age, from about 25.0 at 16 to 24 to a peak of 28.7 at 55 to 64, then eases slightly in older adults. (Sources: NHS Digital. Health Survey for England 2024. Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity 2025.)
It sees the fat that matters and BMI doesn't. Waist-to-height ratio measures fat around the middle, which tracks cardiometabolic risk more closely than total body fat, and a ratio under 0.5 is the usual benchmark for lower risk whatever your age or background. About 70% of UK adults sit at 0.5 or above, per Health Survey for England data. The Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity (2025) said measures of fat distribution should sit alongside BMI in the clinic, and the body fat percentage calculator on this site gives you an estimate of abdominal fat. (Sources: NHS Digital. Health Survey for England 2024. Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity 2025. CDC/NCHS NHANES 2021-2023.)
- CDC/NCHS. (2025). Vital and Health Statistics Series 3, No. 50: Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: United States, August 2021 to August 2023.
- NHS Digital. Health Survey for England 2024.
- Puhl RM, Brownell KD. Obesity, 14(10), 1802 to 1815. 2006. Sutin AR, Terracciano A. PLOS ONE, 8(7), e70048. 2013.
- Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity. (2025). Definition and diagnostic criteria of clinical obesity.