Estimated daily calories to maintain weight, by age, sex and activity level — based on USDA Dietary Guidelines. ✓ USDA guidelines
Comparison of men vs women (moderate activity).
Estimated calories per day to maintain weight.
| Age | Sedentary | Moderately Active | Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19–30 | 2,000 | 2,100 | 2,400 |
| 31–50 | 1,800 | 2,000 | 2,200 |
| 51–60 | 1,600 | 1,800 | 2,000 |
| 61+ | 1,600 | 1,800 | 2,000 |
Estimated calories per day to maintain weight.
| Age | Sedentary | Moderately Active | Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19–30 | 2,400 | 2,700 | 3,000 |
| 31–50 | 2,200 | 2,500 | 2,900 |
| 51–60 | 2,000 | 2,300 | 2,600 |
| 61+ | 2,000 | 2,200 | 2,400 |
Your daily calorie needs depend on your age, sex, body size and how active you are. In general, adult women need roughly 1,600–2,400 calories a day and adult men about 2,000–3,000, with younger and more active people at the higher end. Needs gradually fall with age as metabolism and muscle mass decline. These USDA estimates are for a person of average height and weight — a bigger or smaller body needs correspondingly more or less.
To maintain your weight, eat around your estimate; to lose weight, a deficit of about 500 calories a day yields roughly a pound a week. For a number tailored to your exact stats, use our calorie calculator, TDEE calculator or calorie deficit calculator.
Calorie needs are the same everywhere — these figures apply worldwide. UK guidance often cites 2,000 kcal for women and 2,500 kcal for men as a rough daily reference, which sits neatly within these ranges. Values are in kilocalories (kcal), the "Calories" shown on food labels.
Every figure in a daily-needs table is an estimate built in two steps. First, basal metabolic rate is calculated from weight, height, age and sex — the Mifflin-St Jeor equation is the usual choice. Then that resting figure is multiplied by an activity factor, typically between 1.2 for sedentary and around 1.55 for moderately active.
The activity multiplier is where nearly all of the imprecision lives. Moving one step up the scale changes the result by several hundred calories a day, which dwarfs any difference between competing BMR equations. Honest self-assessment of activity matters far more than which formula produced the table.
Two adjustments make the numbers more useful in practice. Body composition is invisible to these equations, so a muscular person is systematically underestimated and a sedentary one overestimated. And the estimate drifts as weight changes: metabolic rate falls as body mass drops, so a target set at the start of a change no longer applies months later. Treat the figure as a starting hypothesis to be corrected against real results.