What Are Maintenance Calories?
Maintenance calories are the number of calories you need each day to keep your body weight stable — also called your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). It's the sum of your resting metabolism (BMR), the energy you burn moving, and the energy used digesting food. Eat at maintenance and weight holds steady; eat below and you lose; eat above and you gain. For most adults, maintenance lands somewhere between 1,800 and 2,800 kcal/day depending on size, sex, and activity.
How to Find Your Maintenance Calories
There are two approaches, and the best result comes from combining them.
1. Estimate with a formula (starting point)
Calculate BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiply by an activity factor:
| Activity level | Multiplier (× BMR) |
|---|---|
| Sedentary (desk job, little exercise) | 1.2 |
| Lightly active (1–3 days/week) | 1.375 |
| Moderately active (3–5 days/week) | 1.55 |
| Very active (6–7 days/week) | 1.725 |
This gives a good estimate, but it's an average — your real number can differ by a few hundred calories.
2. Verify by tracking (the accurate way)
Eat at your estimated maintenance for 2–3 weeks, logging consistently, and track your weekly-average weight. If it's stable, you've found your real maintenance. If it's creeping up or down, your true number is a bit lower or higher than the formula predicted. This self-calibration is the most accurate method because it reflects your actual metabolism.
How to Track Maintenance (Step by Step)
- Set your daily target to your maintenance number.
- Log your food each day and aim to land near the target — a ±100 kcal band is fine.
- Weigh in regularly (daily or several times a week) and look at the weekly average, not single readings.
- Review every 2–3 weeks. If the average is flat, you're maintaining. If it's drifting, adjust (next section).
Daily weight swings 1–2 kg from water, sodium, carbs, and digestion — none of it fat. Judging maintenance by a single morning reading leads to overreacting. A 7-day average smooths the noise and shows the real trend.
Adjusting When Your Weight Drifts
Maintenance isn't a fixed number forever — activity, sleep, and seasons shift it. When your weekly-average weight drifts outside a comfortable range (say ±1 kg from your target weight):
- Trending up? Drop your daily target by ~100–150 kcal and reassess in two weeks.
- Trending down? Raise it by ~100–150 kcal.
Small adjustments beat big ones — you're nudging, not dieting.
Reverse Dieting Into Maintenance
If you're coming off a fat-loss phase, don't jump straight from a deficit to a big maintenance number. Reverse dieting — adding ~50–100 kcal per week until your weight stabilises — lets you find your new maintenance gradually while minimising rapid fat regain. A tracker that makes it easy to bump your target weekly and watch the trend is ideal for this.
The Best App for Tracking Maintenance
NutriBalance
NutriBalance suits maintenance well. It calculates your target automatically from your stats and goal, tracks full macros free (protein matters most for holding body composition steady), and includes a weight-trend chart that filters out daily fluctuations so you can see whether you're genuinely flat. The streak system matters more than people expect here: motivation dips once you're not chasing a loss, and gamified logging keeps the habit alive through maintenance and reverse dieting.
The Bottom Line
Find maintenance by estimating with a TDEE formula, then verifying against your weekly-average weight. Track it by setting that number as your target, logging to stay near it, and nudging up or down when the trend drifts. Maintenance is the skill that makes weight loss permanent.
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