Maintenance calories are the amount you can eat without your weight moving up or down. That number has a simpler name you already know: your TDEE. It's the most useful figure in your entire nutrition toolkit, because every other goal — cutting, bulking, recomping — is just a deliberate step away from it. Nail maintenance and everything else gets easy.
Your maintenance level is the daily intake at which energy in equals energy out. Eat that amount and your body weight holds flat over time. Functionally, it is identical to your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) — the sum of everything you burn in 24 hours: resting metabolism, daily movement, exercise, and the cost of digesting food. "Maintenance calories" is just the coaching-friendly name for the same number.
That equivalence matters because it means you don't need a separate calculation for maintenance. If you can find your TDEE, you've found your maintenance. The two are one figure wearing two labels.
Most people chase a deficit or surplus before they know what they're stepping away from, which is like setting a thermostat without knowing the room temperature. Maintenance is the reference point that gives every goal its meaning.
Get maintenance wrong and every downstream target is wrong by the same margin. That's why it's worth pinning down precisely before you do anything else.
The fast estimate uses the same two-step process as any TDEE calculation. Compute BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor formula, then multiply by your activity factor:
Where your lifestyle lands on the multiplier scale roughly determines your maintenance range:
| Lifestyle / activity | Multiplier | Rough maintenance (typical adult) |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary desk worker | 1.2 | 1,600–2,100 cal/day |
| Lightly active | 1.375 | 1,850–2,400 cal/day |
| Moderately active | 1.55 | 2,100–2,800 cal/day |
| Very active / heavy labor | 1.725 | 2,400–3,200 cal/day |
| Athlete | 1.9 | 2,700–3,600 cal/day |
These ranges are wide on purpose: height, weight, age, and sex all push you within them. Use the estimate as a starting line, not a finish line.
The calculator returns your TDEE — your maintenance number — in one step.
Find My Maintenance →Formulas land within about ±10% for most people, which is close but not exact. The most accurate way to find maintenance is to measure it on yourself. The method is low-tech and reliable: track everything you eat for two weeks while your weight is stable, then average your daily intake.
If your weight genuinely held flat across those two weeks, the average of what you ate is your maintenance, by definition. No formula can beat a direct observation of your own energy balance. The catch is honesty — logging has to be complete, including oils, drinks, and the bites you don't think count.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1. Weigh daily | Same time each morning, after the bathroom, before eating. |
| 2. Log everything | Track all food and drink accurately for 14 days straight. |
| 3. Average the weight | Compare week-1 average to week-2 average — it should be roughly equal. |
| 4. Average the calories | If weight held flat, your average daily intake is your maintenance. |
| 5. Adjust if it drifted | Up ~1 lb? You were ~250 over. Down ~1 lb? You were ~250 under. Correct accordingly. |
Maintenance is not a permanent number stamped on you at birth. It moves, and knowing the drivers tells you when to recalculate.
Take a 32-year-old woman, 145 lb (66 kg), 5'6" (168 cm), working a desk job with three weekly workouts. Her BMR comes out near 1,400 calories. At a Light-to-Moderate multiplier of around 1.45, her formula maintenance is about 1,400 × 1.45 ≈ 2,030.
She then tests it: she eats 2,000 calories daily for two weeks and her morning-weight average is unchanged. The empirical method confirms the estimate — her true maintenance is about 2,000. Now she has an anchor. To cut, she drops to 1,500–1,750. To slowly gain, she nudges up to 2,250. Every decision flows from that one verified number.
Yes. They are two names for the same number. TDEE is the technical term for total daily burn; maintenance calories is the everyday term for the intake that keeps your weight flat. Because flat weight means energy in equals energy out, the figures are identical.
Usually one of three reasons: you lost weight, so there's less of you to fuel; your activity quietly fell; or you've been dieting long enough that adaptive thermogenesis lowered your burn. Recalculate after any meaningful weight change, and after a long cut, consider easing intake back up gradually.
Your true metabolic maintenance doesn't lurch around week to week, but the scale does because of water, sodium, and food in your digestive tract. Don't redefine maintenance from a single noisy week. Use multi-week averages, and only adjust your target if the trend genuinely moves.
As long as your goal calls for it. Some people maintain indefinitely once they like their physique. Others use deliberate maintenance breaks — a week or two between cutting phases — to recover hormonally and mentally before resuming a deficit. There's no maximum; maintenance is a sustainable place to live.
Enter your stats and let the calculator hand you your maintenance number plus every goal target.
Open the Calculator →