Maintenance calorie calculator

Your maintenance calories are what you can consume on an ordinary day and weigh the same next month. Fill in five things and this page estimates them with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, the formula most calculators use. The sums run in your browser: nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.

Units
Sex

Used to estimate your resting burn. "Other" takes the point halfway between the two.

Age (years)
Height (cm)
Weight (kg)
How active are you?

Your estimated Maintenance Calories

Fill in all five to see your estimate.

An estimate, not advice

This is what the equation predicts for a typical body of your age, sex, height and weight. It cannot see how much of you is muscle, and it knows your week only as well as the activity level you picked. Treat it as a starting guess to check against your own weight trend over a few weeks, not as a target. If you are pregnant, under medical care or have a history of disordered eating, talk to a doctor or a dietitian before you set any calorie target.

Why calculators are usually a few hundred calories off, and how your weigh-ins and a food log find the real number: Maintenance calories: the number everything else hangs on →

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