What's My TDEE

Find your real maintenance calories

If you’ve been logging your food and weighing yourself, those numbers already hold the answer. Put in two weeks or more and see what you actually burn, with a range that shows how sure it is.

Updated

Don’t have these numbers yet?

Start today. Log everything you eat in any food-tracking app, and weigh yourself each morning. In two to four weeks you’ll have all this page needs. How to measure it

Until then, the TDEE calculator gives an estimate from published equations, with a likely range.

Get my estimate
Average weight
First 7 days
Last 7 days
Or paste every weigh-in for a tighter range

Dates are optional, and exports from a smart scale or app work as they are. Without dates, each line is the next day; put “-” for a missed day. When there are enough weigh-ins here, they’re used instead of the two averages.

Your real maintenance

From 28 days averaging 1,700 kcal, with first-week and last-week weights of 66 kg and 64.5 kg:

2,250kcal a day

Very likely between 1,900 and 2,470 kcal a day: a 19-in-20 range.

You lost about 0.5 kg a week, which took about 550 kcal a day from your body’s stores.

From your first and last weeks, 21 days apart.

Two more weeks of tracking would narrow the range by about 80 kcal either side.

Put in your own figures and this compares them with your estimate from the TDEE calculator.

This is your maintenance in the numbers you log. Keep using the same app and habits, and it stays your number.

This is an estimate, not medical advice. It isn’t for anyone 18 or under, or for pregnancy or breastfeeding, when energy needs change. If you have a health condition, ask your GP or a dietitian.

Real maintenance: the key numbers

  • Real maintenance is your average logged intake minus what went into storage: the intake-balance method used in research (Seale, 1997; Heymsfield, 2017).
  • With steady weight, day-to-day weight swings alone leave about ±580 kcal a day after 2 weeks of first-week and last-week averages, ±190 after 4 and ±120 after 6; four weeks of daily weigh-ins give about ±180.
  • The 3,500 kcal a pound rule (7,700 per kg) fits people with over about 30 kg of body fat; at 10 kg of fat a kilo holds about 5,550 kcal (Hall, 2008).
  • In one study, people’s own 7-day food records came out about 22% below what they actually used (Seale, 1997), so the result is your maintenance in the numbers you log.
  • Weight runs about 0.35% higher at weekends, so whole weeks of weigh-ins are averaged (Turicchi, 2020).

How to measure it

  1. Pick a settled stretch

    Two weeks at least, four or more for a tighter range. Start a week after any big change in eating: early changes are mostly water and stored glycogen (Kreitzman, 1992).

  2. Log everything, every day

    Use the food app you already use. If you miss a day, leave it out of the average rather than guessing.

  3. Weigh each morning

    Same time, same scale, before eating. Single days swing with water; the weekly average is what counts.

  4. Average and enter

    Average your calories over the whole stretch, and your weight over the first 7 and last 7 days. Or paste every weigh-in.

How it’s worked out

How your real maintenance is worked out, step by step
StepFigureNote
Average logged intake1,700From your food app, over the whole period.
Weight trend, kg a week−0.50The change between your first-week and last-week averages.
Energy per kg of change7,700The 3,500 kcal a pound rule. It fits people with over about 30 kg of body fat; leaner people store less per kg (Hall, 2008), so the range allows 5,550 to 8,130.
Into or out of storage−550Weight trend × energy per kg, a day.
Real maintenance2,250Logged intake minus what went into storage.

This is the intake-balance method used in research (Seale, 1997; Heymsfield, 2017): what you burn is what you ate, less what went into storage. The range adds the day-to-day swing in your weight, using the standard error of a trend (Hall and Chow, 2011), to the spread in energy per kg. It needs at least 14 days.

Short answers

How do I find my maintenance calories?

Log what you eat and weigh yourself each morning for 2 to 4 weeks. Your maintenance is your average intake, adjusted for how much your weight changed: losing 0.5 kg a week means your body covered about 550 kcal a day from its stores, so your maintenance is about 550 above what you ate.

How long do I need to track to find my maintenance?

At least two weeks, ideally four or more. With first-week and last-week averages, day-to-day swings in weight alone leave about ±580 kcal a day after 2 weeks, ±190 after 4 and ±120 after 6. Four weeks of daily weigh-ins give about ±180. That’s our calculation, using the 0.5 kg day-to-day swing Hall and Chow (2011) assume.

Why is my real maintenance different from a TDEE calculator?

Because formulas predict the average person like you, and even the National Academies’ 2023 equations are typically out by about 240 to 340 kcal a day for one person. Your own log may run low too: In one study, people’s own 7-day food records came out about 22% below what they actually used (Seale, 1997). Measured in your logged numbers, though, it’s the figure to keep using.

Is 3,500 calories a pound right?

Only for some people. The rule works out at about 7,700 kcal per kg, which matches people with more than about 30 kg of body fat. Leaner people lose more lean tissue with each kilo, which holds less energy (Hall, 2008): about 5,550 kcal per kg at 10 kg of fat. Over months, the rule also overstates how much weight a deficit takes off (Thomas, 2013).

Why use whole weeks of weigh-ins?

Weight rises at weekends and falls on weekdays, by about 0.35% in one large study (Turicchi, 2020), and it swings with water from day to day. Averaging whole weeks cancels the weekend rhythm and smooths the swings.

Sources

Checked against each source on 22 and 23 October 2026

  • Seale JL, Rumpler WV (1997). Comparison of energy expenditure measurements by diet records, energy intake balance, doubly labeled water and room calorimetry. Eur J Clin Nutr 51(12):856–63. PMID 9426361
  • Heymsfield SB, et al. (2017). Establishing energy requirements for body weight maintenance: validation of an intake-balance method. BMC Res Notes 10(1):220. PMID 28651559
  • Hall KD, Chow CC (2011). Estimating changes in free-living energy intake and its confidence interval. Am J Clin Nutr 94(1):66–74. PMID 21562087
  • Hall KD (2008). What is the required energy deficit per unit weight loss? Int J Obes 32(3):573–6. PMID 17848938
  • Thomas DM, et al. (2013). Can a weight loss of one pound a week be achieved with a 3500-kcal deficit? Commentary on a commonly accepted rule. Int J Obes 37(12):1611–3. PMID 23628852
  • Turicchi J, et al. (2020). Weekly, seasonal and holiday body weight fluctuation patterns among individuals engaged in a European multi-centre behavioural weight loss maintenance intervention. PLoS One 15(4):e0232152. PMID 32353079
  • Orsama AL, et al. (2014). Weight rhythms: weight increases during weekends and decreases during weekdays. Obes Facts 7(1):36–47. PMID 24504358
  • Kreitzman SN, Coxon AY, Szaz KF (1992). Glycogen storage: illusions of easy weight loss, excessive weight regain, and distortions in estimates of body composition. Am J Clin Nutr 56(1 Suppl):292S–3S. PMID 1615908
  • National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2023). Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy. doi:10.17226/26818