// Basic Fitness Calculators

Maintenance Calorie Calculator

Bring three or more weeks of real intake and real weight data, and find out what your maintenance actually is.

Your details

Your result

Calibrated maintenance
2,263–2,538kcal/day
Best single estimate
2,400kcal/day
Formula estimate
2,633kcal/day
Verdict
Your intake looks like maintenance
Weight trend
0kg/week
  • Your weight moved 0 kg a week, inside the range that normal fluid variation explains. Over 4 weeks at 2,400 kcal, that intake is the best evidence you have for your own maintenance.
  • The calibrated figure comes from energy balance over your window: intake − (weight change × 7,700 ÷ 28 days). The band around it is what ±0.5 kg of ordinary scale noise is worth across 28 days — track for longer and the band narrows.
  • Treat it as feedback, not a fixed property of your body. Maintenance moves with weight, training load, and time in a deficit or surplus, so re-run it after any sustained change.

Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.

What your result means

Maintenance is the intake at which your weight stays flat over weeks. Every equation on this site can only guess at it, because it predicts from height, weight, age and a bracket you pick yourself. What you ate and what the scale did is evidence — and evidence beats a population average about you.

So this page doesn't predict your maintenance. It checks a prediction. It takes the formula estimate, your logged average intake, and your weight trend over the same window, and reports what those three together imply.

The answer arrives as a band rather than a single number, and the band comes from the scale itself: a kilogram of day-to-day fluid movement is unremarkable, and over a short window that uncertainty is worth a few hundred calories a day. Track for longer and the band narrows. That isn't a limitation being apologised for — it is the whole reason a three-week minimum exists.

How it is calculated

Energy balance over an observed window, against a Mifflin-St Jeor starting estimate

Formula estimate = Mifflin-St Jeor BMR × activity factor Observed maintenance = average daily intake − (weight change kg × 7,700 ÷ days) Band = observed ± (0.5 kg × 7,700 ÷ days) Verdict: weekly change within ±0.25% of bodyweight reads as stable

What it assumes

  • 7,700 kcal per kilogram is the conventional energy density of bodyweight change. It's used here only as a first-order conversion across a short window, never as a long-run predictor of what your weight will do — bodyweight response to a given intake adapts over time, and this arithmetic can't see that.
  • The ±0.5 kg in the band is an allowance for ordinary day-to-day fluid variation, which is why the band tightens as the window lengthens rather than being a fixed margin.
  • Weight change is treated as one quantity. It's really fat, lean tissue, gut content and water moving at once, and the conversion can't separate them.
  • Three weeks is the floor. Below it, normal fluid swings are larger than the signal, so the tool returns no number rather than a confident wrong one.
  • Self-reported intake runs low far more often than high. Where the observation lands more than 40% from the equation, the tool says the inputs don't add up instead of printing the result.

Units and rounding

  • Weight in kilograms, height in centimetres, age in years; intake in kilocalories per day.
  • Weight change is in kilograms across the whole window: negative if you lost, positive if you gained.
  • A window shorter than three weeks returns a verdict, not a number.

Worked example

A 30-year-old man, 85 kg, 183 cm, training 3–5 days a week (moderate, 1.55). He logged an average of 2,700 kcal a day for 4 weeks and lost 1.6 kg over that window.

  1. Formula estimate: BMR = (10 × 85) + (6.25 × 183) − (5 × 30) + 5 = 1,848.75 kcal/day
  2. Maintenance = 1,848.75 × 1.55 = 2,866 kcal/day
  3. Weight trend = −1.6 ÷ 4 = −0.4 kg/week, which is −0.47% of bodyweight, a real downward trend rather than noise
  4. Observed = 2,700 − (−1.6 × 7,700 ÷ 28) = 2,700 + 440 = 3,140 kcal/day
  5. Band = 3,140 ± (0.5 × 7,700 ÷ 28) = 3,140 ± 138 → 3,003–3,278 kcal/day

His own data puts maintenance near 3,140 kcal, about 10% above what the equation predicted. He was not failing to lose weight; he was in a deficit the whole time and simply had a higher maintenance than the average person his size.

Limitations

  • The output is only as good as the intake log behind it. Unweighed portions, forgotten drinks and cooking oil all push the same way, and a systematically low log makes measured maintenance look lower than it is.
  • Maintenance isn't a fixed personal constant. It moves with body weight, training load, sleep, illness, and how much you move outside the gym on any given week.
  • After a long or aggressive diet, measured maintenance is often lower than predicted: partly true adaptation, mostly reduced spontaneous movement. Stepping intake up gradually is more reliable than jumping straight to the predicted figure.
  • Weight stability doesn't mean body-composition stability. It's entirely possible to hold weight while slowly losing muscle and gaining fat, which is why maintenance phases are best paired with resistance training.
  • Like every estimate here, the activity bracket carries most of the error, and it is the input you choose yourself.

What to do next

  • If the verdict was stable, you now have a maintenance figure grounded in your own data. Use it as the reference point a cut or a gain is set against, and re-check it after any sustained change in weight or training.
  • If the verdict was that you have been eating below or above maintenance, don't jump to the calibrated number in one step. Move intake in 100–150 kcal stages and re-run after another three weeks.
  • Coming off a diet, walk intake up over three to four weeks rather than jumping. The gradual route reduces the fat regain that follows an abrupt return to eating.
  • Use a maintenance phase deliberately between cuts. Time at maintenance restores training quality and adherence, and makes the next deficit far more productive.
  • If your goal is recomposition (less fat, more muscle, same weight) maintenance is the correct intake, and progressive resistance training plus high protein is what makes it work.

Sources

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TDEECalorie DeficitBulking CalorieBody FatProteinBMI
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// Frequently Asked

Questions, answered.

What are maintenance calories?

The daily intake at which your weight stays stable over time. Above it you gain, below it you lose. It's the reference point every other calorie target is defined against.

Are maintenance calories the same as TDEE?

The concepts point at the same thing, but the two tools don't do the same job. The TDEE calculator predicts your expenditure from a population equation; this page tests that prediction against what you actually ate and what your weight actually did. One is an informed guess, the other is a measurement.

How many weeks of data do I need?

Three at the very least, and four to six is materially better. It isn't an arbitrary threshold: the band this tool reports around your maintenance is set by scale noise divided by the number of days, so a six-week window returns an answer roughly twice as tight as a three-week one.

Should I eat at maintenance after a diet?

Usually yes, and deliberately rather than by accident. Returning to maintenance in stages over three to four weeks tends to preserve the result better than an abrupt jump back to normal eating.

Can I build muscle at maintenance calories?

It's possible, particularly for beginners, people returning after a break, and those with higher body fat. Progress is slower than in a surplus, but body composition can improve at stable weight with progressive training and high protein.

Why did my maintenance drop after losing weight?

A smaller body costs less to run and to move, so both the resting and activity components fall. Recalculating after every 4–5 kg of change keeps the figure realistic.

Maintenance is a phase worth planning, not the gap between diets.

Maintenance blocks are where training quality gets rebuilt. Talk one through on a free guided tour at RPM Gym in Al Manhal.

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