How to determine your ideal body weight.

Body fat measurements and bathroom scales are not the best way to estimate ideal body-weight.
A healthy lifestyle of common sense nutrition and regular exercise is a better pathway to ideal body weight and not the “hard and fast” programs that some individuals undertake. A realistic, safe and attainable body weight for an individual will depend on the following factors:
Current health status
A review of personal health-risk factors should be taken into account when attempting to define ideal body weight. For example, if you have high blood pressure, a small weight reduction (as little as 5kgs) has been shown to be quite beneficial.

Having extra body mass means the heart must work harder to pump blood through more capillaries that feed that extra tissue. Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol are further examples of medical conditions that can be positively affected by weight loss.
Family health status
If your parents and siblings are extremely overweight, it is highly unlikely that you will ever be ''model-thin.'' As unreasonable as that sounds, such a genetic limitation should be kept in mind when establishing realistic body-weight goals.
Body composition
A leaner body is a fat burning machine. The more muscle or lean body mass you have, the more calories you burn. The more calories you burn, the more body fat you lose.

Men have a higher metabolic rate than women. This is because they naturally have more muscle mass. Men and women who have a relatively high amount of muscle may weigh substantially more than others of similar heights, their body-weight levels may be entirely appropriate given their lean muscle mass.
Body-fat distribution
possessing a high amount of body-fat in the upper body is risky in terms of good health. Individuals with upper-body or abdominal fat should consider losing weight with a combined program of sensible eating and exercise. To determine excessive amounts of upper-body fat, a measure of waist-to-hip (WHR) ratio is simple and accurate.

WHR is determined by dividing the waist circumference by the hip circumference. Waist circumference is defined as the smallest circumference between the rib cage and belly button. Hip circumference is defined as the largest circumference of the hip-buttocks region.

Men with WHR values exceeding 0.95 are considered to have an excessive amount of upper-body fat, while those with less than 0.95 are deemed to have an acceptable level of upper-body fat. Women with WHR values above 0.86 are considered to have an unhealthy amount of upper-body fat, while those with scores less than 0.86 are designated as having a reasonable level of accumulated fat tissue on their upper bodies.