This number holds your weight
Your maintenance calories are what you can eat while the scale stays put — your body’s daily energy use. It is the same figure as your TDEE, seen from the goal side. Eat around it and you hold; below it you lose, above it you gain.
We don’t hand you one figure. Maintenance is a resting-burn estimate (BMR) times an activity factor, and several credible BMR equations exist — so we run five and show the band they agree on: Mifflin–St Jeor (1990), the Harris–Benedict original (1919) and its Roza revision (1984), WHO/FAO, and Katch–McArdle (1991) once you add a body-fat percentage. Each one is sourced, with its published error, on our method page.
How to Figure Out Your Maintenance Calories
No app or tracker required — the method is three steps and a reality check. The calculator above does the arithmetic; here is what it’s actually doing, so the number means something rather than appearing out of nowhere.
- Estimate your resting burn (BMR). This is the energy your body spends at complete rest, before any movement — worked out from your sex, weight, height and age. Run it on the BMR calculator, which shows five formulas so you see the spread instead of one falsely precise figure.
- Multiply by an activity factor. Scale that resting burn up for how much you move, using the brackets below. BMR × activity factor is your maintenance — the same figure as your TDEE, read from the goal side.
- Cross-check against the scale. The formula is a starting estimate, not a verdict. Eat around the number for two to three weeks and read the trend: if your weight holds, that is your real maintenance. If it drifts, your true number sits a little above or below — the scale settles it, not the equation.
- Read it as a range, not a line. The formulas disagree by a few hundred calories and the activity factor is a rough bracket, so the honest output is a band. Eat anywhere inside it and you hold; a kilo up or down across a week is water and food in transit, not fat gained.
| Activity level | Factor | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | ×1.2 | Little or no exercise, desk job |
| Lightly active | ×1.375 | Light exercise 1–3 days/week |
| Moderately active | ×1.55 | Moderate exercise 3–5 days/week |
| Very active | ×1.725 | Hard exercise 6–7 days/week |
| Extra active | ×1.9 | Physical job or twice-daily training |
What the five formulas actually give you
Take a 35-year-old woman, 70 kg at 165 cm. The equations put her resting burn between about 1,395 kcal (Mifflin–St Jeor) and 1,466 kcal (Harris–Benedict 1919) — a 70-kcal spread before she has moved at all. At the moderate ×1.55 bracket from the table above, that becomes a maintenance band of roughly 2,160–2,270 kcal, about 110 kcal wide. Add a body-fat figure — say 30% — and Katch–McArdle (370 + 21.6 × 49 kg of lean mass ≈ 1,428 kcal) lands inside that band rather than replacing it.
That width is the honest part. A calculator that prints a flat “2,214 kcal” hides the same disagreement behind a false decimal. Katch–McArdle is the term-for-term Cunningham (1991) equation under a textbook label, so we never list it twice to fake a wider range — more on that here.
Why the scale stalls on a “deficit”
The most common frustration is eating in what looks like a deficit and not losing. It is almost never a broken metabolism. Two things quietly close the gap:
- Intake is under-counted — one tablespoon of oil is about 120 kcal, a splash of dressing another 80–100, and eyeballed portions run 15–25% under the real weight. Three or four of those in a day quietly rebuilds the deficit.
- Activity is over-counted — the multiplier already flatters, and a wearable’s “calories burned” is the least accurate number it reports; validation studies routinely find the active-energy figure off by tens of percent.
If the scale is flat for two or three weeks, your true maintenance is roughly where your intake actually sits — and that reading is more accurate than any formula on this page.
Where to go next
Want to lose? A deficit is built from this number — see the calorie deficit calculator. Want to know your real maintenance rather than an estimate? Log a couple of weeks in the diary and read the trend — it beats any formula.
FAQ
What are maintenance calories?
Maintenance calories are the amount you can eat while your weight stays the same — your body’s daily energy use. It is the same number as your TDEE, seen from the goal side. Because your burn shifts day to day, it is best treated as a range, not a single figure.
How do I calculate maintenance calories?
Estimate your resting burn (BMR) from sex, weight, height and age, then multiply by an activity factor (1.2 sedentary up to 1.9 for very hard training). We run five published BMR equations — Mifflin–St Jeor, both Harris–Benedict versions, WHO/FAO and Katch–McArdle — and show the spread, so you get an honest band rather than one number that looks more precise than it is.
Why am I not losing weight if I am in a deficit?
Two ordinary reasons, not a broken metabolism: intake is usually under-counted (unlogged bites, oil, dressings, generous portions) and activity is usually over-counted (both the multiplier and any tracker). If the scale is flat for a few weeks, your real maintenance is likely where your intake actually sits — logging honestly for two weeks shows it.
Is a stall of a kilo up and down a problem?
No. Weight swings within a few hundred grams to a couple of kilos are water, food still in transit, and glycogen — not fat gained or lost. Maintenance is a band, and moving around inside it is normal, not a lapse.
Do maintenance calories change?
Yes — they drift as your weight, muscle, activity and age change, so a number from six months ago may be stale. Re-check it now and then, and trust a two-week weight trend over any single calculation.