Maintenance vs target
Maintenance keeps weight stable. The target adds the selected goal adjustment.
Estimate daily calories for fat loss, maintenance, or muscle gain from your body stats, activity level, and goal.
The formula stays the same while the page now guides the flow more clearly.
Maintenance keeps weight stable. The target adds the selected goal adjustment.
Daily intake can vary. Weekly consistency is usually more useful.
This free calorie calculator estimates BMR with Mifflin-St Jeor, multiplies it by activity level, then adjusts the result for fat loss, maintenance, or muscle gain. It helps answer how many calories should I eat to lose weight with a personalized target.
The target is an estimated daily calorie starting point. Use tracking and weekly progress to refine it.
Avoid overestimating activity, cutting calories too aggressively, or changing the target after only one high or low day.
Calculating your calories for weight loss starts with estimating your BMR using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiplying by an activity factor to find maintenance. From there, reducing intake by 300–500 calories creates a manageable deficit for fat loss.
The output is still a starting point rather than a guarantee, because real energy expenditure changes with movement, sleep, hormones, and food tracking accuracy. Even so, the Mifflin equation remains one of the most widely used methods in practice, supported by Mifflin et al. (1990). Use your result for two to four weeks, compare it with body-weight trends, and then fine-tune your intake instead of reacting to a single high or low day.
BMR = 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) - 5 × age + 5 for men, or - 161 for women; maintenance calories = BMR × activity factor.
A 30-year-old male at 80 kg and 180 cm has a BMR of about 1,780 kcal. At a 1.55 activity factor, maintenance is about 2,759 kcal, and a 500 kcal deficit gives about 2,259 kcal per day for fat loss.
Mifflin MD et al. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;51(2):241-247. This paper introduced the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, a standard method for estimating resting energy needs.