The simplest answer to how many calories to lose weight is this: eat 300–500 calories fewer than your body burns each day. That gap — a calorie deficit — is the single thing that drives fat loss, and everything else (protein, meal timing, food choices) exists to make that deficit sustainable and comfortable. This guide walks you through finding your own number in three steps, gives you a worked example, and shows where the math stops and real life begins.
The short answer
To lose weight, eat about 300–500 calories below your maintenance calories (your TDEE — the amount that keeps your weight stable). For most adults that lands somewhere between 1,400 and 2,200 calories a day, and it produces a healthy, muscle-sparing loss of roughly 0.25–0.5 kg (0.5–1 lb) per week. Faster isn't better: a moderate deficit keeps your energy up, protects muscle, and — most importantly — is one you can actually stick to for months.
The whole process is three steps:
- Step 1 — Estimate your maintenance calories (TDEE).
- Step 2 — Subtract a sensible deficit (300–500 kcal).
- Step 3 — Split that target into protein, carbs and fat, then build meals around it.
Step 1: Estimate your maintenance calories (TDEE)
Your maintenance calories, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), is what you burn in a day across your resting metabolism plus all movement. To know how many calories to lose weight, you first need this baseline — then you eat under it.
The fastest reasonable estimate is a bodyweight multiplier:
| Activity level | What it looks like | Calories per kg of bodyweight |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | Desk job, little exercise | 26–28 |
| Lightly active | Some walking, 1–2 workouts/week | 29–31 |
| Moderately active | On your feet or training 3–5 days/week | 32–34 |
| Very active | Hard training 6–7 days/week or manual job | 35–38 |
So a moderately active 70 kg person has a maintenance of roughly 70 × 33 ≈ 2,300 calories. A more precise route is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation for your BMR (resting burn) multiplied by an activity factor, but for setting up a deficit the multiplier above is close enough to start. You'll refine it from real-world data anyway — see the section below on why the calculator is only a starting point.
Step 2: Set a sensible calorie deficit
Subtract 300–500 calories from your maintenance. That's the sweet spot for most people: large enough to lose fat at a visible pace, small enough that you're not miserable, ravenous, or shedding muscle. One kilogram of body fat stores roughly 7,700 calories, so a 500-calorie daily deficit predicts about 0.5 kg lost per week.
Why not slash more and lose faster? Because aggressive deficits reliably backfire:
- You lose muscle, not just fat — which lowers your metabolism and leaves you "skinny-fat."
- Energy, sleep, mood and workouts suffer, so you move less and burn less without noticing.
- Hunger and cravings spike, and adherence collapses — the crash diet you quit in three weeks loses to the moderate one you keep for six months.
As a safety floor, most adults shouldn't drop below about 1,200 calories/day (women) or 1,500 calories/day (men) without medical supervision. If your maintenance is low, take a smaller deficit and add a daily walk rather than starving the number down.
How much protein, carbs and fat in your deficit
Once you have your calorie target, split it into macros. In a deficit the priority order is clear: protein first, then divide the rest between carbs and fat to taste. Protein matters most because it preserves muscle while you lose fat and is the most filling macronutrient — it keeps you satisfied on fewer calories.
| Macro | Target | Calories per gram | Why it matters in a deficit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protein | 1.6–2.2 g per kg bodyweight | 4 | Protects muscle, maximises fullness |
| Fat | 0.6–1.0 g per kg bodyweight | 9 | Hormones, satiety, absorbing vitamins |
| Carbs | Fill the remaining calories | 4 | Fuels training and daily energy; fibre aids fullness |
A practical order of operations: set protein by bodyweight, set fat at the low end if you like more carbs (or higher if you prefer), then whatever calories remain go to carbohydrates. Favour high-fibre, minimally processed carbs — oats, dal, whole grains, fruit and vegetables — because fibre and volume keep you full far longer than the same calories from refined snacks. If you want a deeper walkthrough of turning macros into daily meals, our guide on how to create a personalized diet plan with AI lays out the whole flow.
A worked example
Meet Anjali: 32 years old, 68 kg, moderately active (trains 4 days a week), wants to lose fat steadily.
- Maintenance (TDEE): 68 kg × 33 ≈ 2,240 calories.
- Deficit: 2,240 − 450 ≈ 1,800 calories/day target.
- Protein: 68 × 1.8 ≈ 122 g (≈ 490 kcal).
- Fat: 68 × 0.8 ≈ 54 g (≈ 490 kcal).
- Carbs: remaining ≈ 820 kcal ÷ 4 ≈ 205 g.
Here's what 1,800 calories can actually look like on a plate — with veg and non-veg options, using everyday Indian dishes:
| Meal | Veg option | Non-veg option | Approx. calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | 2 moong-dal chilla + bowl of curd | 3-egg veggie omelette + 1 multigrain toast | ~380 |
| Lunch | 2 roti + dal + palak-paneer + salad | 2 roti + grilled chicken curry + salad | ~550 |
| Snack | Roasted chana + a fruit + green tea | Greek yoghurt + a handful of nuts | ~250 |
| Dinner | 1 bowl rajma + 1 roti + sautéed sabzi | Grilled fish + mixed veg + small bowl rice | ~500 |
| Daily target | ≈ 1,800 kcal · ~120 g protein | ~1,680–1,800 | |
For a full week of ready-to-use menus like this, see our 7-day Indian diet plan for weight loss with both veg and non-veg charts.
Why the calculator number is only a starting point
Every calorie calculator is an educated estimate, not a measurement. Your real burn shifts with muscle mass, sleep, stress, hormones, medications, how much you fidget, and how honestly you track food. Two people with identical stats can maintain on numbers 300+ calories apart. So treat your starting target as a hypothesis and let the scale test it:
- Track for two weeks at your target, weighing yourself a few mornings a week and using the weekly average, not any single day (water weight is noisy).
- Read the trend. Losing about 0.25–0.5 kg/week? Perfect — hold steady. Not moving after two weeks? Trim another 100–200 calories or add daily steps. Losing too fast or feeling wrecked? Add calories back.
- Re-check every few kilos. As you get lighter your maintenance drops, so the target that worked at the start will eventually stall — nudge it down again.
This is exactly where a static PDF or a generic calorie chart falls short: it hands you one number and walks away. It can't see that you skipped lunch, travelled, hit a craving, or stopped losing. That feedback loop — adjusting the plan to the human — is the difference between a diet that works and one that quietly stops.
Let whattoBite do the math and build the meals
Doing the arithmetic once is easy; doing it every day, then turning it into meals you'll actually eat, is the hard part. That's what whattoBite is for. whattoBite is an AI diet-planning platform — a mobile app and a web app at whattobite.com — that builds a fully personalized meal plan in seconds and adapts it to your goals, medical conditions, and food culture. You get your calorie target and the exact dishes to hit it, without spreadsheets.
Why an AI planner beats a one-size-fits-all chart:
- It's truly personalized. Answer a short questionnaire — goal, age, height/weight, diet type, activity, medical conditions, allergies and food preferences — and it computes your calorie and macro targets and fills them with real meals.
- Indian and global cuisine. Vegetarian, non-veg, eggetarian, vegan, Jain, halal or pescatarian — it respects your culture and cravings instead of forcing bland "diet food."
- It's medical-condition aware. Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, PCOS/PCOD, thyroid, IBS, acid reflux and more shape the plan. With Health Intelligence, Pro users can even upload a lab report so the plan adapts to their biomarkers.
- It learns and adapts. Watto, the built-in AI coach, logs meals (even from a photo of your plate), swaps dishes you don't like, remembers your preferences, and adjusts when life happens — a missed meal, travel, or a planned cheat meal.
- Habits, handled. Streaks, XP, daily missions, hydration tracking and family sync keep the whole thing sticky.
You can start free: get your free AI diet plan in a couple of minutes, and let the app hold your calorie target for you day to day. If you'd like to compare tools before you commit, our roundup of the best AI diet planner in 2026 explains what to look for. The calories are simple math — whattoBite just makes sure you never have to think about it again.