Calculate your calorie needs
For the correct calculation, we need the following information.
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What are my calorie needs?
How many calories do you actually need each day? Almost everyone asks it at some point, and the answer matters: consistently eating more than you burn leads to weight gain, and the health problems that follow it. The reverse is true too: eat too little for too long and you miss out on nutrients, minerals and vitamins, which does its own damage.
You do not need to work through a formula by hand. Enter your details above and the calculator does it, whether you are a woman, a man, or working it out for a teenager.
How the calculation works
Gender is the single biggest factor. Men generally carry more muscle than women, and muscle burns more energy at rest than fat does, so a man's daily requirement is usually higher than a woman's at the same height and weight. Height plays a large part for the same reason: a person who is 1.85 m tall needs more than someone who is 1.60 m.
Age matters because muscle mass falls and activity tends to drop as people get older. Someone who keeps eating the same amount at 55 as they did at 25 will usually gain weight slowly. Recalculating every few years is worth the two minutes it takes.
Reading the result
The figure you get is your total daily energy expenditure: everything you burn in a normal day, not just at rest. Eat that and your weight should hold steady. Eat about 500 kcal less and you should lose in the region of half a kilo a week; eat 500 more and you should gain at a similar rate.
Treat all three numbers as a starting point rather than a verdict. Track what you eat for two or three weeks, watch what the scale does, and adjust. That feedback loop beats any formula, including this one.
