Maintenance Calorie Calculator: Your Baseline Number

Maintenance calories are the daily intake that keeps your body weight stable. They are identical to your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) — the total calories your body burns through rest, digestion, daily movement, and exercise combined.

Knowing your maintenance number anchors every fitness goal. Fat loss is maintenance minus a deficit. Muscle gain is maintenance plus a surplus. Recomposition hovers right around maintenance. Without this number, every calorie decision is a guess.

The two-step maintenance calculation

Maintenance calorie estimation uses the same equations as TDEE. The math is two steps: estimate BMR, then multiply by activity level.

Step 1 — BMR via Mifflin–St Jeor

BMR = 10×weight(kg) + 6.25×height(cm) − 5×age + 5 (men) or −161 (women). For an 80 kg, 178 cm, 30-year-old man: BMR = 1,762 kcal.

Step 2 — Activity multiplier

Multiply BMR by 1.2 (sedentary), 1.375 (light), 1.55 (moderate), 1.725 (very active), or 1.9 (extra active). Most office workers who train 3–4 days/week sit at 1.45–1.55.

Verify your maintenance in 21 days

Calculators give a starting estimate that's within ±10% for most people. Verify with this protocol:

• Eat at the calculated maintenance number ±50 kcal for 14–21 days.
• Weigh in every morning under the same conditions. Compute a 7-day rolling average.
• Stable rolling weight = your real maintenance.
• Drifting up by 0.3+ kg = real maintenance is ~100–300 kcal below the calculator's estimate.
• Drifting down by 0.3+ kg = real maintenance is ~100–300 kcal higher.

Why maintenance is a moving target

Maintenance calories shift over time. They drop as you lose weight (less mass to move). They rise as you gain muscle. They fall slightly with age. They can move ±200 kcal/day with seasonal activity changes, sleep, or new jobs.

Recalculate every 5 kg of weight change, every 8 weeks during an active diet or bulk, or twice a year during long-term maintenance. For deeper detail, see how many calories to maintain weight.

Maintenance calorie examples

Typical maintenance numbers by gender, age, and activity level.

Common mistakes and misconceptions

• Picking too-high an activity tier. The biggest single source of error in maintenance estimates.
• Judging in under 14 days. Water swings 1–2 kg from food and sodium alone.
• Treating maintenance as permanent. It moves with weight, age, season, and life events.
• Eating low all week then bingeing on weekends. Weekly totals matter, not daily.

Tips for finding your real maintenance

• Plan a 'maintenance phase' between cut and bulk cycles to recalibrate the number.
• Use a food scale for the first 2 weeks of verification. Eyeballing portions distorts results.
• Set protein at 0.8–1 g per pound of bodyweight at maintenance — defends lean mass during later cuts.
• Take a 1-week diet break at maintenance every 8–10 weeks of dieting to restore some adaptive metabolic rate.
• Standardize your weigh-in conditions: same morning, post-bathroom, before eating or drinking, in the same clothing. Variance drops dramatically.
• Treat your activity multiplier as the most error-prone input — when in doubt, pick the lower tier and let real data reveal whether you need to move up.
• Maintenance numbers change with seasons. Many people drop 100–200 kcal across winter as outdoor activity falls and rise again in spring; recalibrate quarterly.
• If real maintenance is consistently higher than the formula predicts, you likely have above-average lean mass. If consistently lower, you may have a long dieting history producing some adaptive thermogenesis.

People also ask

Related calculators & guides

• Main TDEE & Body Fat Calculator — maintenance plus fat-loss and muscle-gain targets
• Calories to maintain weight — deeper guide
• What is TDEE? — the same number as maintenance
• TDEE accuracy — what to expect from any estimate