A 30-year-old woman who is 165 cm tall, weighs 60–70 kg and works a desk job or trains a couple of times a week needs roughly 1,600–1,950 calories a day to keep her weight steady, according to our calorie calculator. A 30-year-old man at 178 cm and 70–90 kg with the same lifestyle needs about 2,000–2,570. To lose weight, you subtract a deficit from that number. The tables below show where you fit.
How many calories a woman needs per day, by weight
The numbers are maintenance calories: what keeps your weight where it is. Columns are activity levels, rows are body weight. Age and height are fixed, because calories depend on all four at once and a table that ignored that would just be wrong.
| Weight | Sedentary | Light | Moderate | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 kg | 1,464 | 1,678 | 1,891 | 2,105 |
| 60 kg | 1,584 | 1,815 | 2,046 | 2,277 |
| 70 kg | 1,704 | 1,953 | 2,201 | 2,450 |
| 80 kg | 1,824 | 2,090 | 2,356 | 2,622 |
| 90 kg | 1,944 | 2,228 | 2,511 | 2,795 |
| 100 kg | 2,064 | 2,365 | 2,666 | 2,967 |
Maintenance calories. Woman, 30, 165 cm. Mifflin-St Jeor. Worked out with the calorie calculator.
How many calories a man needs per day, by weight
Same maths for a 30-year-old man who is 178 cm tall. At the same weight men come out higher, because the base formula uses a different adjustment for them.
| Weight | Sedentary | Light | Moderate | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 kg | 1,881 | 2,155 | 2,430 | 2,704 |
| 70 kg | 2,001 | 2,293 | 2,585 | 2,876 |
| 80 kg | 2,121 | 2,430 | 2,740 | 3,049 |
| 90 kg | 2,241 | 2,568 | 2,895 | 3,221 |
| 100 kg | 2,361 | 2,705 | 3,050 | 3,394 |
| 110 kg | 2,481 | 2,843 | 3,205 | 3,566 |
Maintenance calories. Man, 30, 178 cm. Mifflin-St Jeor. Worked out with the calorie calculator.
Both tables use the equation from Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990, the same one behind our calorie calculator. It estimates your resting burn, which is then multiplied by an activity factor. The idea of "resting burn times activity level" comes from FAO/WHO/UNU, Human energy requirements, chapter 5, 2004.
Picking your column: activity level
This is where most people go wrong, and almost always by guessing too high. Rough guide:
- Sedentary (×1.2): desk job, you drive or take transit, no exercise.
- Light (×1.375): 1–3 workouts a week, or a job with a lot of walking.
- Moderate (×1.55): 3–5 workouts a week.
- High (×1.725): 6–7 workouts a week, or physical work.
If you're stuck between two columns, take the one on the left. Three gym hours a week on top of a desk job is closer to light than moderate. The other 165 hours of the week you're mostly sitting.
How age and height shift the number
Your needs drop slowly with age. In the Mifflin-St Jeor formula every year takes 5 calories off your resting burn, so 50 per decade, which turns into 60–70 a day once activity is factored in. There's a by-age table for a woman and a man of average height in our post on daily macro requirements.
Height pushes the other way: each centimetre adds 6.25 calories to resting burn. A woman who is 175 cm tall needs noticeably more than one who is 155 cm at the same weight. If you're far from 165 or 178 cm, the tables will be off, and the calculator is the better tool because it takes height, age and weight together.
How many calories to eat to lose weight
To lose weight, you take maintenance and subtract a deficit. Here's what the deficit calculator gives a 30-year-old woman, 165 cm, light activity: the first column is her daily burn, the rest is how much to eat to lose 0.25, 0.5 or 0.75 kg a week.
| Weight | Burn (TDEE) | 0.25 kg/wk | 0.5 kg/wk | 0.75 kg/wk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 kg | 1,815 | 1,565 | 1,452 | 1,452 |
| 70 kg | 1,953 | 1,703 | 1,562 | 1,562 |
| 80 kg | 2,090 | 1,840 | 1,672 | 1,672 |
| 90 kg | 2,228 | 1,978 | 1,782 | 1,782 |
| 100 kg | 2,365 | 2,115 | 1,892 | 1,892 |
| 110 kg | 2,503 | 2,253 | 2,003 | 2,002 |
Woman, 30, 165 cm, light activity (×1.375). The deficit is capped at 20% of your burn and the target never drops below 1200 kcal. Worked out with the calorie deficit calculator.
Notice the 0.5 and 0.75 kg columns are almost the same. The calculator never lets the deficit go past 20% of your burn, which is our own cautious choice, so a fast pace hits that cap for smaller or less active people. There's also a floor: 1,200 calories for women and 1,500 for men, the upper ends of the low-calorie ranges in the NHLBI clinical guidelines, 1998. The target doesn't go below it. To fit the deficit to your own weight, use the calorie deficit calculator. If you have a date in mind, the weight loss calculator will tell you whether it's realistic and what to eat to get there.
Why the table is only a starting point
Any formula describes an average person. Two people with the same height, weight and age can burn quite different amounts: different muscle mass, different amounts of moving around during the day, different sleep. So treat the number as a guess and test it.
The test is simple. For two or three weeks eat roughly at that number and log what you eat, and weigh yourself in the morning a few times a week. If your weekly average holds steady, the number is right. If it creeps up or down, move it a little (studies don't give an exact step) and watch for another couple of weeks. Single days tell you little, since water and salt make the scale jump around. Look at the average.
Logging is easiest right when you eat. If weighing every plate isn't for you, send a photo or a few words to the CalCash bot in Telegram and it adds up the calories for the day. It's free and there's no subscription.
One honest caveat: these are general estimates, not medical advice. If you're pregnant or have a thyroid condition, diabetes or another health issue, work out your number with a doctor.
Reminders
Water and weight