Calculate your daily calorie target based on your weight goal and desired rate of change per week.
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This calculator first estimates your maintenance calories using the Mifflin-St Jeor BMR formula adjusted for activity level, then adjusts that number based on your goal: subtracting calories to lose weight, or adding calories to gain weight, using the common approximation that 1 kg of body weight corresponds to roughly 7700 kcal.
A rate of 0.25 to 0.5 kg per week is commonly considered a sustainable pace for weight loss or gain. Faster rates require larger calorie deficits or surpluses, which can be harder to maintain and may not be appropriate for everyone, consulting a healthcare provider is recommended for personalized guidance.
For example, a 30-year-old woman, 165 cm tall, weighing 70 kg, moderately active, targeting a 0.5 kg/week weight loss, has an estimated maintenance calorie level of 2,201 kcal/day. Her daily target to hit that rate of loss works out to 1,651 kcal/day, a deficit of about 550 kcal below maintenance.
Choosing an aggressive target rate of change, larger deficits are harder to sustain and more likely to trigger muscle loss or rebound weight regain than a gradual 0.25-0.5 kg/week pace.
Not updating the calorie target as weight changes, maintenance calories shift as body weight changes, so a target set at the start of a long weight-loss journey gradually becomes less accurate.
Confusing this goal-based target with plain maintenance calories, the 'maintenance calories' figure shown alongside the target is the unadjusted baseline, not the number to actually eat if the goal is to lose or gain weight.
This tool builds on the same BMR formula as our BMR/Calorie Calculator, but adds a specific weight-change goal and target rate to calculate a daily calorie number tailored to that goal.
The calculator will show an error if your target rate of change would result in an unsafely low calorie target. Reduce your target rate of change or consult a healthcare provider.
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