Calorie calculator
A daily calorie target based on your energy use and your goal. Deficits are capped at the lesser of a quarter of your maintenance level or 1,000 kcal, and no target falls below 1,500 kcal for men or 1,200 for women.
Enter your details
Result
These are estimates from population-level equations, not a measurement of you and not medical advice. Individual results vary widely. Talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before making significant changes to how you eat or train.
How this is calculated
Calorie target with safety limitsdefault
target = TDEE + daily change
daily change = weekly rate (kg) × 7700 / 7
deficit capped at min(0.25 × TDEE, 1000 kcal)
floor: 1500 kcal (men), 1200 kcal (women)
- Source
- TDEE from Mifflin-St Jeor (1990). Energy equivalent of body mass from Wishnofsky M., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 6(5), 1958, pp. 542–546.
- Assumes
- That 7,700 kcal corresponds to one kilogram of body mass change, and that the relationship stays linear over time. Neither holds exactly.
- Accuracy
- The 7,700 figure overstates long-run loss, because energy expenditure falls as body mass falls (Hall et al., The Lancet, 2011). Real rates diverge from the projection within weeks. Use it to set a starting point, then adjust from measured results.
Calorie target by maintenance level and goal
Every figure has the site’s safety rules applied: deficits are capped at the lesser of a quarter of maintenance or 1,000 kcal, and no target falls below 1,500 kcal for men or 1,200 for women. Where a row is flat across the loss columns, the cap is doing the work.
| Maintenance | Maintain | −0.25 kg/wk | −0.5 kg/wk | +0.25 kg/wk | +0.5 kg/wk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1800 kcal | 1800 | 1525 | 1500 | 2075 | 2350 |
| 2000 kcal | 2000 | 1725 | 1500 | 2275 | 2550 |
| 2200 kcal | 2200 | 1925 | 1650 | 2475 | 2750 |
| 2400 kcal | 2400 | 2125 | 1850 | 2675 | 2950 |
| 2600 kcal | 2600 | 2325 | 2050 | 2875 | 3150 |
| 2800 kcal | 2800 | 2525 | 2250 | 3075 | 3350 |
| 3000 kcal | 3000 | 2725 | 2450 | 3275 | 3550 |
Questions
- Why was my deficit reduced?
- Because it exceeded one of two limits: a quarter of your maintenance level, or 1,000 kcal a day, whichever is smaller. Larger deficits increase lean mass loss and are harder to sustain, and this site does not produce them.
- Why will it not show a number below 1,200 or 1,500 kcal?
- Intakes below those floors are used clinically, under supervision, with monitoring for micronutrient deficiency. A web calculator cannot provide any of that. If your inputs imply a lower figure, the floor is shown instead, and it is worth discussing with a doctor rather than starting alone.
- Why is there no aggressive or rapid option?
- Because faster is not better here. The evidence for very large deficits is poor on both adherence and lean mass retention, and the labels themselves encourage a framing this site avoids. The fastest preset is 0.5 kg a week in either direction.
- Is 3,500 kcal really a pound of fat?
- It is a useful approximation and a poor model. The figure comes from Wishnofsky in 1958 and assumes the deficit comes entirely from fat and that expenditure stays constant. In practice expenditure falls as you lose weight, so a fixed deficit yields progressively less loss.
- Why does entering a goal weight sometimes stop the calculation?
- If the goal weight would put you below a BMI of 18.5 for your height, no plan toward it is shown. The healthy range for your height is shown instead. That is a deliberate limit, not a bug.
- How long should I stay in a deficit?
- This site does not prescribe that, because the answer depends on circumstances it cannot see. What it can say: adherence matters more than size of deficit, and periods at maintenance are a normal part of a long process rather than a failure.