How Many Calories Do I Need to Maintain My Weight?

Whether you want to stay the same weight, eat enough to support training, or anchor a small deficit or surplus, knowing your maintenance calorie number is the foundation. This guide gives you the simple formula, the realistic ranges, and a verification method you can run in three weeks.

Every other goal — fat loss, lean bulk, recomposition — is just a deliberate offset from this number.

Step 1 — calculate your starting TDEE

Use the Mifflin–St Jeor equation to estimate BMR, then multiply by an activity factor. Sedentary office workers usually land in the 1,800–2,200 range; active lifters and athletes in 2,500–3,500.

Step 2 — verify against your scale over 2–3 weeks

TDEE calculators give a population-average estimate. Your actual number can be ±10% from the prediction. Verify with this protocol:

• Eat at your calculated TDEE within ±50 kcal for 14–21 days.
• Weigh daily, same time, same conditions. Use a 7-day rolling average.
• Stable rolling weight = your real maintenance.
• Drifting up by 0.3+ kg = real maintenance is below calculated by roughly 100–300 kcal.
• Drifting down by 0.3+ kg = real maintenance is above calculated by the same range.

What typical maintenance numbers look like

Rough population averages to sanity-check your own number:

• Sedentary woman, 60–65 kg, age 30: 1,700–1,900 kcal
• Moderately active woman, 65–70 kg, age 30: 2,000–2,300 kcal
• Sedentary man, 75–80 kg, age 30: 2,200–2,500 kcal
• Moderately active man, 80–85 kg, age 30: 2,600–2,900 kcal
• Very active man, 85–95 kg, age 25: 3,100–3,700 kcal

Worked example

A 35-year-old woman, 65 kg, 168 cm, training 4 times a week. BMR = 1,388 kcal. TDEE at moderate (1.55) = 2,151 kcal.

She eats 2,150 kcal/day for 21 days and her 7-day rolling weight stays within 0.2 kg. Her real maintenance is ~2,150 kcal/day. If she then wants to cut, dropping to ~1,650 kcal/day creates a 500 kcal deficit and roughly 0.5 kg/week loss.

Common mistakes and misconceptions

• Choosing the wrong activity tier. The biggest source of maintenance-calorie error.
• Tracking food sloppily. If you're off by 200 kcal/day, you can't validate the prediction.
• Judging in 5 days. Water and glycogen swings can mask the real signal for a week. Use rolling averages over 14+ days.
• Setting maintenance and forgetting. Maintenance drifts with weight, age, season, and life events. Re-verify every 6 months.

Tips for finding and holding maintenance

• Pick a 'maintenance phase' between fat-loss and muscle-gain blocks to recalibrate the number rather than guessing.
• Use whole-week calorie averages, not daily numbers. Eating 200 over today and 200 under tomorrow is fine.
• Set your protein at 0.8–1 g per pound of bodyweight at maintenance — this defends lean mass during any later cuts.
• Build maintenance habits before chasing rapid loss. Most people lose because of new behaviors, not new totals.

Related questions

Keep reading on this site

• Free maintenance calorie calculator — TDEE = maintenance
• Daily calorie burn calculator — see resting vs activity burn
• Men's maintenance calculator — male preset
• Women's maintenance calculator — female preset