Whether your goal is fat loss, maintenance or gaining weight, it all comes down to one number: how many calories to eat each day. This calculator turns your maintenance level and goal into a concrete target and timeline.
Energy balance in one sentence
Consume fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight; consume more and you gain. Everything else — meal timing, food choices, macros — refines the outcome but doesn't override this law.
How fast should you go?
For fat loss, 0.5–1% of bodyweight per week is the sweet spot. Faster dieting increasingly costs muscle and adherence. For lean gaining, 0.25–0.5 kg per month limits fat gain.
Frequently asked questions
Most people lose fat well on a 15–25% deficit below their maintenance calories — often 500–750 kcal/day, giving roughly 0.5–0.75 kg of loss per week.
Yes, it's a classic target that produces about 0.5 kg of loss per week for most people while remaining sustainable and muscle-sparing.
We floor targets at ~1,500 kcal (men) / 1,200 kcal (women). Very low intakes are hard to sustain, risk muscle loss, and rarely speed things up meaningfully.