Daily Calorie Calculator: The Complete Guide
Find out how many calories you need each day. Enter your age, sex, height, weight, and activity level to see your maintenance calories and targets for losing or gaining weight.
Who the Daily Calorie Calculator is for
People planning a diet who need a daily calorie target for their goal.
How to use the Daily Calorie Calculator
- Type your values into the fields above — pick your currency or units where the calculator offers them.
- Results update automatically as you type; there's no submit button and nothing is sent to a server.
- Adjust any input to compare scenarios, then copy the result with a single click.
How it works
BMR (Mifflin-St Jeor) is multiplied by an activity factor (1.2 sedentary to 1.9 extra active) to estimate maintenance calories. Subtract about 500/day to lose roughly half a kilo a week, or add 500 to gain.
Features
- Maintenance calories
- Loss & gain targets
- Activity levels
- Metric or imperial
Calories in vs. calories out
Your maintenance calories — your Total Daily Energy Expenditure — are what you burn in a day across resting metabolism, movement, and digestion. Eat at maintenance to hold weight, below it to lose, and above it to gain. A deficit or surplus of about 500 calories a day changes weight by roughly half a kilogram per week.