In simple terms, maintenance calories are calories required to maintain weight. Meaning if your weight hasn’t moved much, this means that you’re eating just about the same calories your body needs.
And, if you’re gaining weight, you’re consuming more energy (calories) than maintenance and if you’re losing you’re eating less than maintenance.
So, you see, if you have any fitness goal, either losing fat or gaining weight/muscle, it’s important to find maintenance calories.
And, people often find it difficult to know their maintenance calories and therefore, cannot accurately track their fitness progress.
So, let’s try to make it easy for you.
Maintenance calories equals BMR multiplied by your activity level.
BMR is the minimal amount of energy your body needs to perform internal functions while at rest. This means that even if you don’t move an inch you’ll still need this much energy to sustain life. And, BMR typically makes up for almost 60-70% of your daily energy needs.
There are two approaches to finding your maintenance calories –
(1) Mathematical Way – Formulas
As far as the first approach is concerned, several people & institutions have given different equations for calculating BMR but a few popular ones used in the majority of online calculators are given by Mifflin St. Jeor, Harris-Benedict (1984), and Schofield.
Harris-Benedict equation (1984) –
Male | BMR = 88.362 + (13.397 x weight in kg) + (4.799 x height in cm) – (5.677 x age in years)
Female | BMR = 447. 593 + (9.247 x weight in kg) + (3.098 x height in cm) – (4.330 x age in years)
Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation –
10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) – 5 × age (y) + S (kcal / day)
Where X is +5 for males & -161 for females
Multiply BMR by appropriate activity level factor to find an estimate of your total daily energy expenditure or maintenance calories.
| Sedentary (little or no activity) | BMR x 1.2 |
| Lightly Active (light exercise/sports : 1-3 days/week) | BMR x 1.375 |
| Moderately Active (moderate exercise/sports : 3-5 days/week) | BMR x 1.55 |
| Very Active (hard exercise/sports : 6-7 days/week) | BMR x 1.725 |
| Extra Active (hard exercise/sports & physical job) | BMR x 1.9 |
Most online calculators use either one of them.
These will give you a rough estimate of your maintenance calories. Now, you need to experiment for a few days/weeks to by consuming your estimated maintenance to find the right number.
(2) Methodological Way – Diet History
The second approach focuses on tracking your current dietary intake for a few days up to a week and record changes in weight.
If no change, you’re consuming your maintenance, if weight is increasing, you’re in energy surplus, and vice versa.
Once, you figure out maintenance, start quantifying your food using a scale & record it in any calorie counting app and take the desired route as per your fitness goal.
[…] building lean muscle, around 200-300 calorie surplus from your maintenance calories is a good range to ensure maximum muscle and minimal fat […]
[…] your maintenance calories using an online […]
Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good.
Thanks keep supporting
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks!
Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks.