Your maintenance calories are the number of calories you burn in a typical day — also called your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). Eat that amount consistently and your weight stays the same. Eat below it and you lose weight; eat above it and you gain. For most adults, maintenance falls somewhere between roughly 1,600 and 3,000 calories per day, depending on body size, age, sex, and how much you move.
That number is the foundation of every diet decision you'll make. You can't set up a sensible cut or a lean bulk without knowing where "neutral" is first. This guide shows you how to estimate your maintenance calories with a formula, then — more importantly — how to verify the number with a few weeks of real data.
Want to skip the math? Our free TDEE calculator does the estimate for you in ten seconds. But it's worth understanding what's behind the number, so keep reading.
What makes up your maintenance calories
TDEE isn't one thing. It's the sum of four components:
BMR — basal metabolic rate (~60–70%). The energy your body burns just to stay alive: heartbeat, breathing, brain function, cell repair. Even if you spent all day in bed, you'd burn this much. It's the biggest slice by far.
NEAT — non-exercise activity thermogenesis (~10–20%, highly variable). All the movement that isn't formal exercise: walking to the store, cooking, fidgeting, taking the stairs. NEAT is the wildcard — it can differ by hundreds of calories a day between a desk worker and someone on their feet all day.
Exercise activity (~0–15%). Deliberate training: gym sessions, runs, sports. Most people overestimate this slice. A hard 45-minute workout might burn 300–400 calories — meaningful, but smaller than the other components.
TEF — thermic effect of food (~10%). The energy cost of digesting, absorbing, and processing what you eat. Protein has the highest thermic effect, which is one reason high-protein diets have a slight metabolic edge.
The takeaway: most of your daily burn happens outside the gym. That's why the activity multipliers below account for your whole lifestyle, not just your workouts.
How to calculate your maintenance calories
The estimate takes two steps: calculate your BMR, then multiply by an activity factor.
Step 1: Calculate your BMR with Mifflin-St Jeor
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is the standard here. In the original 1990 study of 498 healthy adults, it predicted resting energy expenditure more accurately than the older Harris-Benedict formula, which overestimated by about 5% (Mifflin et al., *American Journal of Clinical Nutrition*, 1990).
The equations:
- Men: BMR = 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age (years) + 5
- Women: BMR = 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age (years) − 161
Step 2: Multiply by your activity level
- Sedentary · Description: Desk job, little to no exercise · Multiplier: 1.2
- Lightly active · Description: Light exercise 1–3 days/week · Multiplier: 1.375
- Moderately active · Description: Moderate exercise 3–5 days/week · Multiplier: 1.55
- Very active · Description: Hard exercise 6–7 days/week · Multiplier: 1.725
- Extremely active · Description: Physical job plus hard daily training · Multiplier: 1.9
Be honest here. The most common mistake is picking a multiplier one tier too high. If you train four days a week but sit at a desk the rest of the time, "moderately active" is right — not "very active."
Worked example
Take a 30-year-old woman, 70 kg, 170 cm, who trains four times a week:
- BMR = 10 × 70 + 6.25 × 170 − 5 × 30 − 161 = 700 + 1,062.5 − 150 − 161 = ~1,452 calories
- Maintenance = 1,452 × 1.55 = ~2,250 calories per day
Eating around 2,250 calories daily, her weight should hold steady. That's her starting number — emphasis on *starting*.
The more accurate method: verify with real data
Every formula gives you a population average. You are not a population average. Genetics, muscle mass, NEAT, and logging accuracy can put your true maintenance a few hundred calories away from the estimate. The fix is simple: test it.
- Eat your estimated maintenance (say, 2,250 calories) as consistently as you can for 2–3 weeks. Log everything.
- Weigh yourself daily, same time, same conditions — right after waking up works best. Use the weekly average, not day-to-day readings, since water weight swings 1–2 kg for no reason.
- Compare weekly averages. Weight stable? That's your maintenance — confirmed. Losing about 0.5 kg per week? You're roughly 500 calories under; add them back. Gaining? Subtract accordingly. (One kilogram of body fat holds roughly 7,700 calories.)
This method beats any calculator because it measures *your* body with *your* logging habits baked in. It also sidesteps the messy question of exercise calories — your real-world result already includes them. If your fitness watch says you burned 600 calories on a run, treat that number with suspicion; we cover why in should you eat back exercise calories.
Your maintenance number isn't fixed
Maintenance calories change — and the biggest driver is your own body weight. Lose 10 kg and you're now maintaining a smaller body: less tissue to fuel, less mass to carry around, so your TDEE drops. On top of that, prolonged dieting triggers metabolic adaptation — your body nudges NEAT down and becomes a bit more efficient, so you burn somewhat less than the formulas predict for your new weight.
Practically, this means two things:
- Recalculate as you go. Rerun your numbers every 5 kg of weight change, or whenever your weekly average stalls for 2–3 weeks.
- Expect the finish line to move. The maintenance calories that hold your goal weight will be lower than the ones that held your starting weight. That's normal, not a broken metabolism.
Using maintenance as your anchor
Once you know your maintenance, every goal becomes a simple offset:
- Fat loss: eat about 500 calories below maintenance for roughly 0.5 kg lost per week. Our calorie deficit calculator maps deficit size to your timeline.
- Lean bulk: eat 200–300 calories above maintenance. That's enough surplus to build muscle while keeping fat gain minimal — bigger surpluses mostly add fat.
- Maintenance itself is a goal too. After a long cut, holding at maintenance for a few weeks helps habits and hormones settle before your next phase.
Whatever the goal, protein matters as much as the calorie target. Use the macro calculator to split your calories into protein, carbs, and fat.
The whole system only works if your intake logging is honest and consistent — which is exactly what a good tracker is for. Healthy Buddy logs your meals, tracks your weight trend, and shows you whether you're actually at maintenance — free, no subscription. Download Healthy Buddy and find your real number.
FAQ
How do I know if I'm eating at maintenance?
Track your intake and weigh yourself daily for 2–3 weeks. If your weekly average weight stays within about 0.5 kg, you're at maintenance. Ignore daily fluctuations — water weight makes single readings meaningless.
How many maintenance calories should a woman or man eat?
There's no universal number. Most women land between roughly 1,600 and 2,400 calories; most men between 2,200 and 3,000. Your size, age, and activity level decide where you fall — calculate your own rather than borrowing an average.
Do maintenance calories change with age?
Yes, gradually. BMR declines slowly with age, partly from muscle loss, and activity often drops too. Strength training and staying generally active offset much of the decline. Recalculate every few years — or whenever your weight starts drifting on the same intake.