How to Use the Calorie Calculator
Enter your age, sex, height, weight, and activity level — the calculator estimates your BMR and multiplies it by an activity factor to get your TDEE (maintenance calories), then shows adjusted targets for weight loss and weight gain based on a standard calorie deficit or surplus.
The Calorie Calculator estimates maintenance calories and adjusts for your goal — here's what to enter and how to interpret the results honestly.
Choosing an activity level honestly
Activity level is the input people most commonly overestimate — a desk job with a few weekly workouts is usually closer to "lightly active" than "moderately" or "very active." Choosing an honest, conservative activity level produces a more reliable target than an optimistic one.
Reading the deficit and surplus targets
Alongside your maintenance (TDEE) figure, the calculator typically shows a moderate deficit target for weight loss and a moderate surplus target for weight or muscle gain — treat these as starting points to adjust based on your actual measured progress over the following few weeks, not fixed, guaranteed numbers.