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Maintenance Calories Calculator
Your maintenance calories are the intake at which your weight holds steady — energy in matching energy out. It's the most underrated number in nutrition: every cut is subtracted from it, every bulk is added to it, and eating at it is itself a goal after a diet, during heavy training, or simply when life needs food to be boring for a while.
Your Facts
Fill in the form and press Calculate — your personal label prints here.
This calculator estimates your maintenance from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation and your activity level — the same TDEE math used across all our tools, shown step by step. For most adults it lands between 1,800 and 3,000 kcal per day, a range wide enough to explain why copying anyone else's diet numbers rarely works.
Calculate below, then — if you want the number dialed in — verify it against two weeks of scale data as described underneath.
Finding true maintenance: formula first, scale second
The equation gets you to the right neighborhood; your bodyweight log finds the exact address. Eat the calculated number as consistently as you can for 14 days. Weigh most mornings under identical conditions and compare the average of days 1–7 with days 8–14. Stable within about 0.3 kg? That's your maintenance. Trending down? True maintenance is a little higher — add 100–150 kcal and repeat. Trending up, subtract the same.
This two-week calibration turns a population estimate into your personal number, and it automatically absorbs everything formulas can't see: your genetics, your gut, your job, your fidgeting. It's the single highest-value experiment in self-quantified nutrition.
When eating at maintenance is the goal
After a diet, maintenance is where the results consolidate. The weeks right after a deficit are the highest-risk window for regain; holding at maintenance for at least as long as you dieted lets hunger hormones normalize and makes the new weight the body's defended default rather than a brief visit.
During strength training, maintenance is where recomposition happens — beginners and returners can gain muscle while holding weight steady. And psychologically, planned maintenance phases ('diet breaks') mid-cut measurably improve long-term adherence: they turn dieting from an open-ended sentence into defined blocks with rest between.
Why your maintenance drifts, and when to recalculate
Maintenance is not a constant. It falls as you lose weight (less mass to move and maintain), rises as you add muscle, and swings with daily movement more than most people expect — a step-count collapse from an injury or a desk-bound project can quietly remove 200–400 kcal of daily burn while the calculator's inputs haven't changed.
Recalculate after every ~5 kg of body-weight change, after major shifts in training or job activity, and after any diet longer than three months (metabolic adaptation is real, if usually smaller than feared — typically 5–10%). Between recalculations, trust your weekly weight trend over any formula, including ours.
Frequently asked questions
Maintenance calories are the daily calorie intake at which your weight stays stable — the point where energy consumed equals energy burned. The technical term is TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). All cutting and bulking targets are defined relative to this number.
Estimate your BMR with a validated equation like Mifflin-St Jeor, multiply by an activity factor (1.2–1.9), then verify: eat that number for two weeks and watch your average weight. Stable means you've found it; drifting means adjusting by 100–150 kcal and rechecking.
Not by definition — maintenance is precisely the intake at which you don't. The scale may wobble day to day from water, salt, carbs, and digestion, which is normal noise. If your weekly average climbs for several weeks, the number you're eating simply isn't your true maintenance; adjust down slightly.
Yes — it's the standard recommendation. Hold your new maintenance (recalculated for your lighter body) for at least 4–8 weeks after a diet ends. It stabilizes hunger hormones, protects against rapid regain, and lets your new weight become the default your body defends.