How Many Calories to Maintain Your Weight
Maintenance calories are the amount that keeps your weight steady. Here is how to estimate the number and confirm it in real life.
Maintenance calories are the number of calories that keeps your body weight steady over time. Eat that amount and the scale holds. This is the anchor for every goal, because losing or gaining starts from knowing where you sit today.
What maintenance really means
Your maintenance level is simply your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE. It is the sum of your resting metabolism, the energy to digest food, your workouts, and all your daily movement. When calories in match calories out, weight stays stable.
- Equal to your total daily energy expenditure
- Holds body weight steady when matched
- Varies with body size, muscle mass and activity
- Is the starting point for both fat loss and muscle gain
How to estimate your number
A fast rough estimate is to multiply your body weight in pounds by 14 to 16, using the lower end if you are sedentary and the higher end if you are active. For a cleaner estimate, calculate your BMR with a formula like Mifflin St Jeor and multiply by an activity factor from 1.2 to 1.9.
Confirm it with real data
No formula is exact, so treat your estimate as a starting point. Eat that amount consistently for two weeks and weigh yourself several mornings each week. If your average weight is stable you found maintenance. If it drifts up or down, adjust by about 100 to 200 calories and check again.
- Track calories consistently for two full weeks
- Weigh in several mornings and use the weekly average
- Stable average means you found maintenance
- Adjust by 100-200 calories if weight drifts