Maintenance Calorie Calculator

About this calculator

Maintenance calories are the daily energy intake that keeps your body weight stable — neither gaining nor losing — calculated by taking your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR, the calories your body burns at complete rest) and multiplying it by an activity factor that accounts for exercise and daily movement. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation, published in 1990, is the formula most modern dietitians and clinical nutrition guidelines favor for estimating BMR, having been shown in validation studies to outperform the older Harris-Benedict equation from 1919 for most adults.

This baseline number is the reference point every other goal is set against: eating consistently above maintenance drives weight gain, eating below it drives weight loss, and the size of that gap (commonly a 500 kcal/day deficit or surplus) determines roughly how fast the change happens, since a pound of body fat represents about 3,500 kilocalories. Dietitians and fitness coaches calculate maintenance first, before ever discussing a cutting or bulking target, because every subsequent calorie goal is just maintenance plus or minus an adjustment.

Enter your body stats and activity level, and this calculator computes your Mifflin-St Jeor BMR and applies the matching activity multiplier to estimate your maintenance calories. This is an estimate, not medical advice.