Maintenance Calorie Calculator

How many calories you need to stay exactly where you are. Built for reverse dieters, recomp lifters, and anyone who's done cutting and just wants the number.

Your Stats

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Your Results

Your maintenance calories
—
calories per day to stay where you are
BMR
—
at rest
Activity
—
from movement

How to use this number

Hit this calorie target daily and your weight will stabilize within 2–3 weeks. If the scale still drifts after that window, your activity multiplier is probably off — adjust it up or down by one notch and re-check.

What "maintenance" actually means

Maintenance calories is the number you eat per day to keep your weight constant. Above it, you gain. Below it, you lose. It's not a magic number — it's just the sum of every calorie your body burns in 24 hours: heartbeat, breathing, digestion, thinking, walking, training, fidgeting, all of it.

This calculator estimates that number with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation for your basal metabolic rate, multiplied by your activity level. Same math as TDEE — just framed for people who aren't trying to cut or bulk.

Who this page is for

  • Post-cut reverse dieters. You finished a fat-loss phase and you want a sustainable number to climb back to without regaining fat.
  • Recomp lifters. You want to build muscle and lose fat simultaneously, which requires sitting near maintenance with high protein and hard training.
  • "Just tell me what to eat" users. You don't want to cut, you don't want to bulk — you just want to know how much food matches the body you have right now.

The two-to-three week truth check

Any calculator gives you a starting estimate. The body returns the real answer in 2–3 weeks of weighing in. Here's how to read the response:

  • Scale steady (±1 lb after 3 weeks): the number is right. Eat it.
  • Scale trending up: overestimated activity. Drop the activity level one notch (e.g., moderate → light) and re-check.
  • Scale trending down: underestimated activity, or you're undereating. Bump activity up a notch or add ~150 cal/day.

Ignore the first week. Glycogen swings, water weight, and a normal shift in digestive timing can move the scale 3–5 lb in either direction in the first 7–10 days. Look at week 2 onward.

Why activity multiplier is the biggest lever

Your BMR is fixed for your body — it's a property of your size, age, and lean mass. The activity multiplier is where most of the variance lives. The gap between "sedentary" (1.2) and "moderately active" (1.55) is roughly 30% of your BMR — for a 1,600-cal BMR, that's a ~500 cal/day swing in maintenance.

Be honest about a typical week, not a best week. If you train 3 hard sessions but the other 4 days are desk-and-couch, you're lightly active, not moderately.

What to do with the number

Send it to the macro calculator and set protein, fat, and carb targets. Protein floor first — around 0.8–1.0 g per pound of body weight, especially if you're recomping. Then think about food quality. High satiety per calorie (the PE diet framework) makes hitting a maintenance number day after day a lot less effortful.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between maintenance calories and TDEE?

They're the same number. TDEE — total daily energy expenditure — is what you burn per day; maintenance calories is what you'd eat to match it. We call it 'maintenance' here because that's the goal for the people who land on this page.

How long does my weight take to stabilize at maintenance?

Usually 2–3 weeks of consistent intake. The first week, water weight from increased glycogen storage (especially if you came off a cut) can add 2–5 lb. Don't panic — it's not fat. Let it settle and judge the trend.

Should I reverse diet to get to maintenance after a cut?

Optional. Reverse dieting (adding ~50–100 cal/week over 4–8 weeks) is gentle and easy to follow, but research shows people who jump straight to maintenance after a cut don't gain meaningfully more fat than people who reverse. The main benefit of reverse dieting is psychological — it eases the calorie ramp.

What if I'm gaining or losing at my calculated maintenance number?

Your activity multiplier is probably off by one notch — that's a 200–400 cal/day swing. If you're gaining slowly, drop a level (e.g., moderate → light). If you're losing, raise a level. The body's actual energy cost beats the formula's estimate.

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