How many calories should you eat a day?
The short answer: most women maintain weight around 1,800 to 2,400 kcal a day and most men around 2,200 to 3,000, but your real number depends on your size, age, activity and goal. Here is how to find it in two minutes, and what to do with it.
What your calorie number depends on
Your body burns energy in three ways: keeping you alive at rest, digesting food, and movement. The first part, your basal metabolic rate, is set mostly by your weight, height, age and sex. The rest scales with how active you are.
That is why generic numbers like 2,000 kcal are only a starting point. A 60 kg woman with a desk job and a 90 kg man who trains four times a week can differ by well over 1,000 kcal a day.
How to calculate yours
The standard approach is the Mifflin St Jeor formula: it estimates your resting burn from weight, height, age and sex, then multiplies by an activity factor. You can do the math by hand, or use our free calorie calculator and get your number in seconds.
Then adjust for the goal. To lose fat, eat roughly 300 to 500 kcal below maintenance. To gain muscle, eat 200 to 300 above. Bigger deficits feel faster but usually cost muscle and consistency.
Why one fixed number is not enough
Your true need moves every day. A hard training day, poor sleep or a long walk changes what your body actually uses. A fixed target treats Monday on the couch and Saturday in the gym as the same day, and they are not.
This is where Equil goes further than a formula: it adjusts your daily calories from your real training, sleep and recovery, and it treats the goal correctly, adding calories back on training days when you bulk, protecting your deficit when you cut.
Stop tracking by hand
Equil reads your food, glucose, sleep and training, then adjusts your plan in real time. Not another logger, a coach.
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