Maintenance Calorie Calculator
Katch-McArdle active — height & age not used.
Formula: Mifflin-St Jeor (Katch-McArdle when body fat % is given) × activity factor. Defaults shown are an example profile — replace them with yours. Every constant is documented on the methodology page. Educational estimate — not medical advice.
The daily calories that hold your weight steady — the anchor number every plan starts from.
How maintenance moves as your weight changes
Mifflin-St Jeor, age 35, moderate activity (×1.55); male at 5′10″, female at 5′5″. All values in kcal/day.
| Body weight | Men — maintenance (kcal/day) | Women — maintenance (kcal/day) | Drop per 20 lb lost (men) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 lb | 3,217 | 2,836 | — |
| 230 lb | 3,076 | 2,696 | −141 |
| 210 lb | 2,935 | 2,555 | −141 |
| 190 lb | 2,795 | 2,414 | −141 |
| 170 lb | 2,654 | 2,274 | −141 |
| 150 lb | 2,514 | 2,133 | −141 |
| 130 lb | 2,373 | 1,993 | −141 |
What are maintenance calories?
Maintenance is the daily intake at which your weight holds steady — your TDEE viewed as a target rather than a measurement. Every plan starts from it: a fat-loss diet subtracts from it, a muscle-gain phase adds to it, and a diet break returns to it. Getting this one number roughly right matters more than any macro decision downstream.
Why does maintenance keep moving?
Because the equation runs on your body weight, maintenance falls as you lose and rises as you gain. The table above makes the size of that drift concrete: at this example profile, every 20 lb lost lowers daily maintenance by roughly 140 kcal. This is the quiet reason diets stall — the target that produced a deficit at 220 lb is close to maintenance at 190 lb. Re-run your number after every 10 lb / 5 kg of change, and treat a three-week stall as a signal to recalculate, not to slash calories in frustration.