Maintenance Calorie Calculator

This calculator works out your maintenance calories, the number of calories your body burns in a day and therefore needs to stay at your current weight, using the well-regarded Mifflin-St Jeor equation. Knowing this figure, often called your total daily energy expenditure or TDEE, is the foundation of any weight goal, because weight change comes down to energy balance: eat at maintenance and your weight holds, eat below it and you lose, eat above it and you gain. Guessing leads to frustration in both directions, while a personalised number lets you plan with confidence. The calculation has two parts. First your basal metabolic rate, the energy you burn at complete rest just keeping your body alive, is estimated from your sex, age, height and weight. Then it is multiplied by an activity factor that reflects how much you move, from sedentary desk work up to very active manual jobs or heavy training. You enter those details and choose your activity level, and the calculator returns your maintenance calories, your basal metabolic rate, and suggested targets for losing weight, around 500 calories below maintenance for roughly half a kilogram a week, and for gaining, around 500 above. Use it to set a realistic daily calorie goal, to understand why your weight is or is not changing, or as a starting point that you adjust based on real results over a few weeks. The activity multiplier is the biggest source of error, so be honest rather than optimistic about how active you really are. This is a general estimate for healthy adults, not medical or dietetic advice; for medical weight management, work with your doctor or a dietitian.

Mifflin-St Jeor estimate for healthy adults. The activity multiplier is the biggest variable, so be honest. Adjust based on real results.