A healthy weight for a woman who is 5’7″ falls between 121 and 153 pounds, based on the standard BMI range of 19 to 24. That said, the number that’s right for you depends on your body frame, muscle mass, age, and where you carry your weight. A single range can’t capture all of that, so it helps to understand what shapes these numbers.
The Standard Weight Range
The National Institutes of Health uses BMI to sort weight into categories. For someone who is 5’7″, the breakdown looks like this:
- Underweight (BMI below 18.5): under approximately 118 pounds
- Healthy weight (BMI 19 to 24): 121 to 153 pounds
- Overweight (BMI 25 to 29): 159 to 185 pounds
- Obese (BMI 30 and above): 191 pounds and up
These cutoffs are population-level guidelines. They’re useful as a starting point, but they don’t account for muscle, bone structure, or fat distribution. Two women at 5’7″ and 155 pounds can look completely different and carry very different health risks depending on their body composition.
How Frame Size Shifts the Target
Your bone structure plays a real role in what weight looks and feels healthy on your body. The Metropolitan Life Insurance tables, which were built from data linking body size to longevity, break ideal weight into three frame categories for a 5’7″ woman:
- Small frame: 123 to 136 pounds
- Medium frame: 133 to 147 pounds
- Large frame: 143 to 163 pounds
That’s a 40-pound spread from the bottom of the small-frame range to the top of the large-frame range. If you have wider hips, broader shoulders, and thicker wrists, a weight of 155 or 160 may be perfectly proportional. For a naturally narrow build, 130 might be the sweet spot. A quick way to estimate your frame: wrap your thumb and middle finger around your wrist. If they overlap, you likely have a small frame. If they just touch, medium. If there’s a gap, large.
Clinical Formulas and What They Estimate
Doctors sometimes use a quick formula called the Hamwi method to estimate a starting point for ideal body weight. For women, it works out to 100 pounds for the first 5 feet of height, plus 5 pounds for every inch after that. At 5’7″, that gives you 135 pounds. This number is meant as a clinical baseline, not a personal target. It doesn’t factor in frame size or fitness level, and most practitioners treat it as a rough midpoint with a range of plus or minus 10 percent, which puts you at roughly 122 to 149 pounds.
Why Muscle Mass Changes Everything
BMI treats all weight the same, whether it comes from fat or muscle. Research published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that among female athletes with a “normal” BMI, nearly 7 percent actually had body fat levels high enough to qualify as obese, while 2 percent had body fat so low it was a health concern. The correlation between BMI and actual body fat was significantly weaker in athletes than in the general population. In plain terms, BMI is a blunt tool that can mislabel both fit and unfit women.
If you strength train regularly or carry above-average muscle, you could weigh 160 pounds at 5’7″ and be leaner than someone who weighs 140 but rarely exercises. That’s why body fat percentage offers a more complete picture. For women, a body fat percentage under about 36 percent is generally considered non-overweight, with levels above 42 percent falling into the obese category. Most active women in good health land somewhere between 21 and 33 percent body fat.
Waist Size as a Health Indicator
Where your body stores fat matters as much as how much you weigh. Fat around the abdomen, packed between your organs, is more metabolically dangerous than fat on your hips and thighs. The simplest check: your waist circumference should be less than half your height. At 5’7″ (67 inches), that means keeping your waist measurement under about 33.5 inches. You can measure this yourself with a tape measure around your bare midsection, level with your navel, while breathing normally. If your waist is under that threshold, your metabolic risk is lower regardless of what the scale says.
How Weight Shifts With Age
Your body composition changes over time even if the number on the scale stays put. Starting in your 30s, you gradually lose muscle and gain fat, which means two women at 145 pounds can have very different body fat levels depending on whether they’re 28 or 58. After menopause, this shift accelerates. Women in their 50s tend to gain about 1.5 pounds per year, and the fat that does accumulate moves toward the midsection rather than the hips and thighs.
This redistribution matters because abdominal fat is the type most closely linked to heart disease and metabolic problems. At the same time, your metabolism slows as muscle mass drops. By your 50s, you may need roughly 200 fewer calories per day than you did in your 30s just to maintain the same weight. Strength training becomes especially important during this stage, not necessarily to lose pounds but to preserve the muscle that keeps your metabolism running and protects your bones.
Finding Your Personal Number
Rather than fixating on one ideal weight, think of it as a range shaped by your individual body. If you have a medium frame, don’t exercise intensely, and are in your 30s or 40s, somewhere around 130 to 150 pounds is a reasonable target for a 5’7″ height. If you’re muscular or large-framed, 150 to 163 can be perfectly healthy. If you’re petite-framed and sedentary, the lower end of the BMI range may suit you better.
The most practical approach combines three checks: a scale weight that falls within or near the healthy BMI range, a waist measurement under half your height, and enough physical activity to maintain muscle. Together, these give you a far more accurate picture of health than any single number on the scale. Weight is one data point. How your clothes fit, how you feel during physical activity, and where your body carries its fat all tell you things a bathroom scale cannot.