How many calories should you eat?
Get your daily calories to maintain, lose, or gain weight. Enter your details and activity, and see maintenance plus goal targets side by side.
Maintenance is your TDEE from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. Loss targets never drop below a conservative floor. These are starting points; adjust based on real results over 2 to 3 weeks.
Maintenance first, then your goal.
Everything starts from maintenance, the calories that keep your weight stable. We estimate it from your basal metabolic rate and activity level using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, the same method most dietitians use.
From there, weight change is about energy balance. Eat below maintenance to lose, above it to gain. A deficit of about 500 calories a day tends to produce roughly a pound of loss per week, though individual results vary.
Numbers are a starting point, not a promise. The reliable move is to pick a target, track intake honestly for a few weeks, and adjust. Logging with a photo in the free calorietrack.ai web app makes the tracking part quick.
Questions, answered.
Keep reading.
- 01Steps to calories calculatorEstimate the calories you burn for any step count, body weight, and walking pace.
- 02TDEE calculatorTotal daily energy expenditure: the calories you burn in a day, all in.
- 03How to count caloriesA practical guide to tracking intake accurately.
- 04How we check our numbersThe method behind our calorie estimates.
- 01BMR calculatorYour basal metabolic rate, the calories you burn at complete rest.
- 02Macro calculatorProtein, carb, and fat grams for your calorie target and chosen split.
- 03Burning 1,000 calories a day for weight lossBurning 1,000 calories a day through exercise can help create a deficit, but it takes a large amount of activity and you cannot reliably out-train your diet. Combining a modest calorie reduction with regular movement is usually more effective and sustainable than relying on exercise alone.
- 04Cutting 1,000 calories a day for weight lossCutting 1,000 calories a day from your maintenance level is a large deficit that points toward roughly 2 pounds of loss a week using the rough 3,500-calorie-per-pound rule. It can work for some people, but it is aggressive, hard to sustain, and worth discussing with a healthcare provider first.
- 05Best AI calorie tracker · 2026Top 5 ranked with star scores. Updated quarterly.
- 06Cal AI alternativesFree-forever options to Cal AI, compared by accuracy and price.
Know your number. Hit it.
calorietrack.ai. Snap a meal to log calories in seconds. Free on the web, no signup.