Daily Calorie Needs Chart

Two numbers, not one

A calorie chart is really two calculations stacked together. The first is your basal metabolic rate (BMR): the energy your body uses at complete rest to run your heart, brain, lungs, kidneys and cells. The second is your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE): BMR multiplied by an activity factor that accounts for walking, working, training and the energy cost of digesting food.

The resting number is smaller than many people expect, and the activity multiplier is broader than any single table can capture. The tables below use the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which is the most accurate simple BMR formula for the general adult population, and standard activity multipliers. They assume a 30-year-old adult who is 170 cm tall, so use them as a reference surface rather than a personal prescription.

Multipliers follow the conventional Harris-Benedict activity bands used by dietitians and sports-nutrition guidelines. They are approximations; individual variation in spontaneous movement is large.

Maintenance calories by weight and activity

These are TDEE values, not targets for weight loss. Find your weight on the left and the activity level closest to your real week along the top. If you train hard three times a week but sit for nine hours a day, "moderate" is usually closer than "active".

BMR via Mifflin-St Jeor: 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age + 5 (men) or − 161 (women). Values rounded to the nearest 10 kcal.

Worked example

A 35-year-old woman, 168 cm tall and 74 kg, who exercises moderately three to four times a week:

On the women's chart, the 75 kg row and the moderate column show 2,330 kcal. The 76 kcal difference comes from the chart's reference person being 1 kg heavier, 2 cm taller and 5 years younger than her. That is a difference of about 3% — well inside the error margin of any predictive equation.

If her goal is fat loss, the deficit comes out of the TDEE, not the BMR. A 400 kcal daily deficit gives a target of about 1,854 kcal and an expected loss of roughly 0.36 kg per week (400 × 7 ÷ 7,700).

Turning maintenance into a plan

Use the table to find maintenance, then apply a change you can actually sustain. Aggressive deficits produce faster scale movement but also more hunger, more muscle loss and a higher chance of quitting.

Projections assume that the deficit is real and constant, which is the hard part. Tracking for a week or two gives a better estimate of your true maintenance than any equation, because it captures your actual portion sizes and daily movement.

Why the real number moves

• Prediction error. Mifflin-St Jeor is accurate to roughly ±10% for most adults, which is a few hundred calories at these levels.
• Activity is not a multiplier. The bands compress a wide range of real behaviour. Two "moderate" people can differ by 400 kcal of daily movement.
• Adaptation. As you lose weight, BMR falls because there is less tissue to maintain, and spontaneous movement often falls too. The same intake becomes a smaller deficit.
• Logging error. Oils, sauces, drinks and bites are routinely missed. A 10% under-report is common and enough to stall a plan.
• Water and glycogen. Short-term scale changes can reflect fluid, salt, carbohydrate and menstrual-cycle shifts rather than fat.

Use weekly averages, not daily readings. If the average weight has not moved in three weeks and adherence is genuinely high, reduce intake by 100–150 kcal or add 1,000–2,000 daily steps. The deficit calculator handles the arithmetic for your own inputs.