Every calorie target (for losing weight, gaining it, or holding steady) is built on one number: your maintenance calories. Get it roughly right and the rest is arithmetic. Get it badly wrong and a “deficit” can turn out to be nothing of the sort.
What maintenance calories are
Maintenance calories are the number of calories you need each day to keep your weight stable. Eat that amount, on average, and your weight holds. Eat less and you lose; eat more and you gain.
It is the same thing as your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), seen from the eating side rather than the burning side.
It is made of four parts:
| Component | Share of total (typical) | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| BMR (basal metabolic rate) | 60–70% | Keeping you alive at rest |
| NEAT (non-exercise activity) | 15–30% | Walking, standing, fidgeting, chores |
| Exercise | 0–15% | Deliberate workouts |
| TEF (thermic effect of food) | ~10% | Digesting what you eat |
The part that varies most between people is NEAT. Two people of the same size can differ by several hundred calories a day simply because one has an active job and one sits at a desk. See average BMR by age for the largest component.
Typical maintenance calories
Rough ranges for adults, from standard equations:
| Sedentary | Lightly active | Moderately active | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women, 25–50 | 1,600–1,900 | 1,800–2,100 | 2,000–2,300 |
| Women, 50+ | 1,500–1,700 | 1,700–1,900 | 1,800–2,100 |
| Men, 25–50 | 2,000–2,400 | 2,300–2,700 | 2,500–3,000 |
| Men, 50+ | 1,900–2,200 | 2,100–2,400 | 2,300–2,700 |
These are population averages. Your own figure could sit outside them, especially if you are much smaller, larger or more active than average.
Step 1: estimate it
Any good calculator will do this with the Mifflin–St Jeor equation: it estimates BMR from your weight, height, age and sex, then multiplies by an activity factor.
- TDEE calculator: maintenance directly.
- How many calories should I eat: maintenance plus targets for losing and gaining.
Be conservative with the activity level. It is the weakest part of the whole calculation. If you train three times a week but sit for most of the day, “lightly active” is usually more accurate than “moderately active”. Overstating activity is the most common reason a calculated deficit does not work.
Step 2: check it against reality
A calculator gives you an estimate that is typically within about 10–15% of your true maintenance. For a 2,200-calorie estimate, the real figure could reasonably be anywhere from 1,900 to 2,500. That is a big range when your deficit is 400.
The only way to know your real maintenance is from your own data. It takes two to three weeks:
- Log everything you eat as consistently as you can. It does not need to be perfect, but it needs to be honest: oil, drinks and weekends included.
- Weigh yourself most mornings under the same conditions.
- After 2–3 weeks, compare the average weight of your last week with your first week, and work out your average daily intake.
Then:
Real maintenance ≈ average daily intake + (weekly weight change in kg × 7,700 ÷ 7)
If you lost weight, the weekly change is negative, so maintenance is higher than what you ate. If you gained, it is lower.
A worked example
Over three weeks, you averaged 1,900 calories a day. Your average weight fell from 78.4 kg in week one to 77.6 kg in week three: 0.8 kg over two weeks, or 0.4 kg a week.
0.4 kg × 7,700 ÷ 7 = 440 calories a day of deficit.
Your real maintenance ≈ 1,900 + 440 = about 2,340 calories.
If the calculator had said 2,100, you now know it was about 240 low, and you can set future targets from 2,340 instead.
Ignore the first week of any new diet for this calculation. It includes water and glycogen loss that will exaggerate the result. How much weight can you lose in a month explains why.
Maintenance changes over time
Your maintenance is not fixed. It moves when:
- You lose or gain weight. A lighter body needs less energy, roughly 10–15 calories a day less per kilogram lost. After losing 10 kg, maintenance is typically 100–150 calories lower.
- Your activity changes. A new job, a new baby, an injury or a new walking habit can move it by hundreds of calories.
- You diet for a long time. There is a modest adaptive drop in expenditure during extended dieting, partly through less unconscious movement. It is real but smaller than often claimed, and largely reverses at maintenance.
- You age. Slowly. See average BMR by age.
Re-check every 4–5 kg of change, or whenever your routine changes significantly.
Eating at maintenance on purpose
Maintenance is not only a starting point for dieting. Eating at maintenance deliberately is useful:
- After reaching a goal, to lock in the new weight.
- During a planned break from a long diet: a festival week, a holiday, or simply a pause when motivation is low.
- While building muscle slowly with minimal fat gain, sometimes called body recomposition.
A period at maintenance is not a failure. For long diets, planned maintenance breaks can make the whole process easier to sustain.
Finding your number with less effort
The data-based method above is the most accurate thing you can do, and most people never try it because logging for three weeks sounds exhausting.
BetterCal is designed to make those three weeks easy: type or speak each meal and it is logged with calories and macros, repeat meals are one tap, and your weight syncs from Apple Health or Health Connect. At the end, you have your intake and your trend in one place, and a maintenance figure that belongs to you, not to an equation.
Log a meal the way you would write it down. BetterCal turns a plain sentence, spoken or typed, into calories and macros. Free to start.
Download BetterCal on the App Store · Get BetterCal on Google Play
Frequently asked questions
What are maintenance calories?
The number of calories you need each day to keep your weight stable. It equals your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE): the calories used by your body at rest, in daily movement, in exercise and in digesting food.
How do I calculate my maintenance calories?
Estimate it with a TDEE calculator using the Mifflin–St Jeor equation and a conservative activity level. Then confirm it by logging your food and weight for two to three weeks and adjusting based on how your weight actually changed.
What is the average maintenance calories for a woman?
Roughly 1,600–2,300 calories a day depending on size, age and activity. A sedentary woman aged 25–50 is often around 1,600–1,900.
What is the average maintenance calories for a man?
Roughly 2,000–3,000 calories a day depending on size, age and activity. A sedentary man aged 25–50 is often around 2,000–2,400.
How far below maintenance should I eat to lose weight?
About 10–20% below, which is usually 300–600 calories a day. That produces roughly 0.3–0.6 kg of weight loss a week. See what is a calorie deficit.
Related: TDEE calculator · TDEE vs BMR · calorie deficit calculator
