Finding your maintenance calories

Maintenance is the number you eat to stay the same. Every calculator will estimate it and every estimate is wrong by a few hundred calories; here is how to find yours properly.

1. 01 Eat consistently One steady intake for fourteen days, logged honestly
2. 02 Weigh most days Compare week one average to week two average
3. 03 Read the answer Flat means maintenance; moving tells you which way to adjust

Why the calculator number is a starting point

The equations behind every calculator estimate your basal rate from height, weight, age and sex, then multiply by an activity factor you selected about yourself.

The equation has real error between individuals, and the activity multiplier is a guess most people get wrong in the optimistic direction. Together that is easily a few hundred calories.

The two-week method

Pick the calculator estimate and eat it consistently for fourteen days, logging everything including weekends.

Weigh most mornings under the same conditions and take the weekly average, not single days.

If the two weekly averages are level, that intake is your maintenance. If weight rose or fell, adjust by roughly ten per cent and repeat.

Maintenance is a moving number

It falls as you get lighter, because a smaller body costs less to run. It moves with activity, and with how much you fidget — which itself falls in a deficit.

This is why recalculating every couple of months matters more than getting the first number exactly right.

What to do with it

Fat loss: subtract roughly fifteen to twenty-five per cent. Muscle gain: add around ten per cent. Maintenance itself: eat it, which is a genuine goal and an underrated one after a long diet.

Questions