Calories are a measure of energy used to express the nutritional value of foods.
Your body converts calories from food into energy to support life-sustaining functions such as breathing and pumping blood. Physical activity, such as exercising and going about your daily routine, also burns calories.
When your calorie intake matches your body’s energy needs, your weight is maintained. Consuming fewer calories than your body uses can lead to weight loss, while consuming more calories than your body uses can lead to weight gain.
You don’t have to track your calorie burning to reach your health goals, but understanding your calorie needs and how many calories you burn on an average day can help you develop an appropriate meal plan.
Your caloric needs depend on multiple factors, including your gender, age, and body size. For example, a larger person generally needs more calories to maintain their body weight than a smaller person.
Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is a term used to describe the total number of calories your body burns on a daily basis.
TDEE includes the energy used for critical processes like breathing, circulating blood, and heart function while at rest. This is your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which accounts for 60-70% of your daily energy needs. While your BMR measures your needs, your resting metabolic rate (RMR) measures how many calories your body actually burns at rest.
Several factors impact your BMR, including age, muscle mass, pregnancy status, and diet. For example, your BMR drops by 1-2% per decade after age 20. This is mostly due to age-related muscle loss.
Your total daily energy expenditure also includes the calories burned through thermogenesis—also known as the thermal effect of food (TEF)—and the energy you use during physical activity.
TEF, or thermogenesis, is the energy your body uses to digest and process foods and drinks. It accounts for around 10% of your total daily energy expenditure. Some foods require more energy to digest than others.
Protein has the highest TEF of the three macronutrients. The TEF of protein is 20-30%, meaning the body uses 20-30% of protein’s calories to digest the food. Carbohydrates have a TEF of 5-10%, and fats have a TEF of 0-3%, meaning you keep more calories from these foods.
For this reason, following a high-protein diet can help you burn more calories per day.
The rest of your daily calorie needs come from your level of physical activity, such as exercising and walking. A person who regularly exercises and has a physically demanding job will have much higher calorie needs than a person who lives a sedentary lifestyle.
If you’re trying to figure out how many calories you should be burning per day to lose or gain weight, you’ll first need to determine your daily calorie needs.
The most accurate way to determine your RMR (how many calories your body burns at rest) is to visit a healthcare center that offers direct or indirect calorimetry. Direct calorimetry measures how much heat your body produces over a set period, while indirect calorimetry measures your oxygen consumption during a defined time.
While these tests are accurate, most people cannot access them. Another way to estimate your calorie needs is the Mifflin-St. Jeor equation, which uses your height, body weight, and activity levels to calculate your daily calorie needs.
Using the Mifflin St. Jeor Equation, you’ll plug in your height, weight, and age to determine your calorie needs. Here are the equations for men and women:
- Men: Calories per day = 9.99(weight in kilograms) + 6.25(height in centimeters) –4.92(age) + 5
- Women: Calories per day = 9.99(weight in kilograms) + 6.25(height in centimeters) – 4.92(age) -161
You’ll multiply this answer by an activity factor representing your daily activity levels. Activity factors are as follows:
- Sedentary: x 1.2 (sedentary)
- Lightly active: x 1.375 (light exercise less than three days per week)
- Moderately active: x 1.55 (moderate exercise most days of the week)
- Very active: x 1.725 (hard exercise every day)
- Extra active: x 1.9 (strenuous exercise two or more times per day)
This answer represents your daily calorie expenditure. Remember, this is an estimation and not exact.
Once you determine your daily calorie needs, you can track the calories you eat to understand whether you’re over- or under-consuming calories based on your health needs and goals.
Men generally require more calories to maintain their body weight due to larger body size and greater muscle mass.
According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, moderately active men and women ages 19-60 typically require 2,400-2,800 and 1,800-2,200 calories per day, respectively. Women over 60 require 1,600-2,200 calories per day, while men over 60 need 2,000-2,600 calories daily to maintain their weight.
Once you know your daily calorie needs, you can increase, decrease, or maintain your calorie intake depending on your health needs and goals.
If you’d like to lose weight, it’s generally recommended that you decrease your calorie intake and increase your energy output to create a calorie deficit. This will facilitate fat loss.
Choosing a safe and realistic plan is important if your goal is to lose weight. Most health organizations and medical experts recommend a weight loss goal of 1-2 pounds (0.45- 0.9 kilograms) per week or 4-8 pounds (1.81-3.6 kilograms) per month.
While this may seem like a small amount, research shows that making smaller adjustments in your calorie intake may help you keep weight off long-term. This method can also prevent compensatory changes associated with very low-calorie diets, such as loss of muscle mass, increased appetite, and reductions in RMR, that make weight loss harder to maintain.
Creating a calorie deficit of around 500 calories generally equates to a weight loss of about a pound a week or 4 pounds (3.6 kilograms) a month. You can achieve this deficit by eating slightly fewer calories and increasing your activity levels through exercise. Everyone is different, and people may lose weight slower or faster depending on underlying health conditions, genetics, and other factors.
If you need to gain weight, you’ll need to increase your calorie intake. This could involve eating an extra meal or snack each day while keeping your energy output the same.
For people who want to build up muscle mass while maintaining their weight, increasing their protein intake while also increasing resistance training can help.
It’s not necessary to track all of your daily activities, but having an idea of how many calories you burn while exercising can help you determine your daily calorie intake goals.
Many people use activity trackers, such as Fitbits or Apple Watches, to track their energy expenditure. Research shows that while these devices are accurate for tracking step count and heart rate, they are inaccurate for estimating energy expenditure.
Keeping track of your steps is a great way to monitor your energy output. Although calorie burning varies, you generally burn around 1 calorie for every 20 steps. This means walking 8,000 steps would burn about 400 calories.
Here’s how many calories a 154-pound (69.8-kilogram) person burns per 30 minutes of engaging in the following exercises and activities:
- Biking under 10 miles per hour (mph): 145 calories
- Walking (3.5 mph): 140
- Running/jogging (5 mph): 295
- Swimming slow freestyle laps: 255
- Basketball (vigorous): 220
- Dancing: 165
- Golfing (walking and carrying clubs): 165
- Aerobics: 240
- Light weightlifting: 110
- Heavy yard work (chopping wood): 220
Increasing activity levels can help you build muscle mass and lose body fat. Gaining muscle mass can increase your RMR, which enables you to burn more energy while at rest. A recent study found that a 2.2-pound (1-kilogram) increase in muscle mass can increase RMR by 24 calories per day.
Maintaining muscle mass as you age can also help you maintain a healthy body weight and negate age-related changes in RMR.
If you’re trying to lose weight or body fat by burning more calories, it’s important to use safe and effective methods. Here are a few tips to effectively increase calorie burning:
- Be more active: Consider adding more steps into your day or trying a new exercise program to burn more calories.
- Eat more protein: Following a high-protein diet can help you burn more calories, as protein takes the most energy to digest. Protein also helps you feel more satiated after eating, which can help curb your appetite.
- Add resistance training: Developing a resistance training program, such as a weightlifting routine, can help you gain muscle mass—which is associated with a higher RMR.
- Follow a healthy diet: Following a well-rounded diet high in whole foods and cutting back on foods known to cause weight gain, such as added sugars and fast food, can help you stay within your set calorie range.
If you’re unsure how many calories you should be eating per day, consider consulting a healthcare provider, such as a registered dietitian. They can answer questions and help you develop a safe and effective plan for weight loss.
Determining how many calories you should burn daily requires a few steps, including figuring out your calorie requirements and establishing health goals.
Whether you’re trying to lose, gain, or maintain your weight, using safe, sustainable, and effective methods is important.
If you have questions about your calorie needs, including how many calories you should aim to burn per day, contact your healthcare provider.
