How to work out your maintenance calories
Your maintenance calories, sometimes called your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), are made up of two parts. The first is your basal metabolic rate: the energy your body uses at complete rest to breathe, circulate blood and keep everything ticking over. The second is everything you do on top: walking, training, fidgeting, even digesting food.
The calculator above estimates your BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiplies it by an activity factor. Someone at a desk all day multiplies by 1.2, while someone training hard six days a week multiplies by 1.725 or more. That is why two people of the same size can have maintenance figures hundreds of calories apart.
Calories needed to maintain weight
Searching for “calories needed to maintain weight” or “how many calories do I need to maintain my weight” usually means you want a personal number, not a chart average. Plug in your stats above. If you weigh yourself in stone, switch the unit toggle: you do not need to convert to kilograms first (or use the stone to pounds converter if you prefer).
Treat the result as a starting point. Eat close to it for two or three weeks while tracking weight a few mornings a week. Flat trend means you have found maintenance. Drift up or down, adjust by 100 to 200 kcal and watch again.
From maintenance to a calorie deficit
The targets under your result show gentle and steady fat-loss calories, plus modest surpluses for gaining. For a dedicated cut with weekly pace estimates, open the calorie deficit calculator. Then set protein with the protein calculator and optionally split the rest with the macro calculator.
UK units and why they matter
Bathroom scales in the UK still commonly show stones and pounds, while gym machines and apps often use kilograms. This maintenance calorie calculator accepts both, so you are not forced through a conversion step before you can see calories to maintain weight.
