Maintenance Calorie Calculator

Maintenance calories are the intake that leaves your weight where it is. It is the reference point every other target is measured from — a deficit is maintenance minus something, a surplus is maintenance plus something. The calculator estimates it from your body and your activity, in metric units: 165 lb is 74.8 kg, 5 ft 7 in is 170 cm.

The estimate is step one, not the answer

Every prediction equation, including the ones behind this calculator and the 2023 Dietary Reference Intakes, was fitted to groups of people. It describes the average person with your inputs, and you are not the average person with your inputs. Individual results scatter around any such equation by 10 to 15%, which on a 2,400-calorie estimate is a band roughly 240 to 360 calories wide.

That is not a reason to ignore the number. It is a reason to treat it as a first guess that you are about to test.

How to measure your real maintenance in three weeks

This is the part almost nobody does, and it is worth more than any calculator:

1. Pick the estimate and hold it. Eat close to the calculated figure every day, tracking honestly. Restaurant meals and cooking oil are where the counting quietly fails.
2. Weigh daily, compare weekly. Same time, same conditions, before breakfast. Daily readings swing with water and gut contents; the weekly average does not.
3. Read the trend after week three.
   • Average flat → the estimate is your maintenance. Write it down.
   • Average up by about a pound → you were eating roughly 350 to 500 calories over. Lower the target.
   • Average down by about a pound → you were under by about the same. Raise it.

Two rounds of that turns a population equation into your personal number, and it stays useful for years — provided you rerun it after any large change in weight or routine.

Maintenance is a moving target

The number is not a property you own; it is a description of your current body and current week. Three things move it:

• Body size. Weight appears in every energy equation. Lose 20 lb and maintenance drops with it, which is why plateaus arrive without anything going wrong.
• Lean mass. Muscle costs more at rest than fat does, so a gaining phase nudges maintenance up.
• Activity. A new commute, a desk job, a marathon block — all of it shows up here. The activity level calculator helps you decide which band you are actually in.

Where to go from your maintenance number

Once you know it, everything downstream gets simpler. Subtract to lose — the calorie deficit calculator turns a subtraction into an expected rate. Add to build, as the calorie calculator to gain muscle lays out. And if you have just finished a diet, returning deliberately to maintenance for a stretch is how the loss stops being temporary. The underlying arithmetic for all three is on the TDEE calculator.

This content is informational and does not replace advice from a physician or registered dietitian.