March 15, 2023March 14, 2023 by Libby

How to Know if You Are at a Healthy Weight for Your Body

We all have a unique, largely genetically determined, weight range at which we are generally likely to be our healthiest. I might be healthy at my current size but it would almost certainly be unhealthy for me if I were to lose or gain a significant amount of weight.

I have my own unique body size / weight range and you have yours. Which is why, in the absence of further context, fixating solely on weight is not usually useful when we are trying to understand our own or someone else’s health status. The same weight may be healthy for one person and extremely unhealthy for another.

If knowing your weight alone isn’t necessarily helpful, what are other contextual markers and potential clues we can use to discern if we are at a generally healthy weight for our own unique genetics and overall well-being?

Nutritional indicators you are at a healthy weight / body size:

Normal vitamin + mineral levels
Eating 3 meals of adequate size and roughly 3 snacks each day
Ability to eat with flexibility and spontaneity
Eating a variety of foods (i.e., not the same foods every day)
Regularly eating foods you enjoy, including desserts + holiday foods
Not bingeing or purging
Feeling satisfied (eating enough food and eating foods that sound good to you)
Ability to maintain this general weight range without over- exercising and without food restriction

Physical indicators you are at a healthy weight / body size:

Normal heart rate and blood pressure
Normal blood chemistry levels
Regular hunger + fullness signals (that are adequately responded to)
Consistent + regular menstrual cycle (if you are on the birth control pill for any reason we cannot know about natural cycle regularity)
Lack of dizziness + lightheadedness
Not cold constantly
Not waking up hungry in the middle of the night
Ability to sleep through the night
Not experiencing clumps of hair falling out
Feeling energized for daily life (in general)
Feeling energized for activities, exercise, etc. (in general)
Weight is in accordance with previous growth trends (as seen on an adolescent’s growth chart)
Also consider family history and body shapes/sizes of family members
Also consider other relevant factors such as ethnicity, gender, and muscularity

Psychological indicators you are at a healthy weight / body size:

Not thinking or obsessing about food constantly
Not easily irritated or angered (obviously this can also be caused by other emotional factors but if we are significantly underweight we are more likely to be easily rattled emotionally)

While none of these indicators should be taken in isolation, together they can help paint a picture of what it might look like to be at a weight and size that is healthy for you.

When thinking about a healthy body size, I typically think it is more helpful to focus on the above factors more than on the actual number of one’s weight. Which brings us to our next question…

Is it helpful for me to know my weight??

I think the answer to this question is individualized. Almost always, I find that it’s helpful to not know or monitor your weight if you are experiencing and working through any degree of disordered eating/exercise/body image issues. I find that fixating on the scale tends to get in the way of one tuning into her own bodily signals (such as hunger/fullness), normalizing one’s relationship with food, and working through thought patterns + emotional dynamics that perpetuate disordered eating.

One reason working with a nutrition professional can be helpful is that you can leave the actual monitoring of your weight in someone else’s hands, freeing you to focus on healing your relationship with food and your body.

Once you have FIRST healed your relationship with food, exercise, and your body, you can then more clearly discern whether or not you feel like knowing your weight is a useful piece of information for you. At a minimum, I would suggest waiting until stepping on the scale can be a neutral experience emotionally for you and that knowing your weight doesn’t affect your self-care + nourishment of your body. Furthermore, it should be noted that it is normal for body weight to fluctuate, so it isn’t generally helpful to overly fixate on micro changes in body weight over short periods of time. (To consider an example, one’s body weight may change within about a 5 lb range in 24 hours due to water weight changes alone.)

Maybe you decide you never want to know your exact weight, or maybe you decide you do. Maybe you find it useful in certain seasons of life and that it gets in the way of your care for yourself during others. As you continue to journey in your relationship with food and your body, you can find what works for you.

There is no “right” answer or way to approach this, I only humbly suggest being emotionally honest with yourself regarding how knowing your weight is or isn’t affecting you.