Calorie & Nutrition FAQ

Work out your Basal Metabolic Rate with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, multiply it by your activity factor to get maintenance calories, then adjust for your goal — about 20% below maintenance to lose fat, 10% above to build muscle. The free calorie calculator does the whole sum from your age, sex, height, weight and activity level.

Find your maintenance number first, then compare it with what you actually eat for a week or two. Weigh yourself at the same time each morning and read the weekly average: steady weight means you are eating at maintenance, a falling average means you are in a deficit, a climbing one means you are in a surplus.

Log everything you eat and drink in an app and weigh portions with a kitchen scale instead of guessing — eyeballed portions are the biggest source of error in any food diary. Aim for a seven-day average rather than hitting the exact number every single day, and reuse repeated meals so logging takes about a minute.

Multiply your body weight in kilograms by a goal-based target: roughly 2.2 g/kg while cutting, 1.8 g/kg to maintain and 2.0 g/kg while bulking. Split the daily total across three to five meals at about 0.4 g/kg per sitting. The protein intake calculator works out your range in seconds.

There is no universal number — a good goal is maintenance calories moved in the direction of your aim. Most adults land between 1,800 and 3,000 calories a day. For fat loss, 300–500 below maintenance loses around 0.5–1% of body weight per week, a pace that preserves muscle; for lean gains, 100–300 above it.

Walking costs roughly 0.7 calories per kilogram of body weight per kilometre — about 50 kcal for a 70 kg person at a brisk pace. Ten thousand steps is close to 7 km, so expect somewhere around 300–400 kcal, and more with hills, a faster pace or a weighted rucksack.

Needs drift down as activity and muscle mass fall with age. A practical guide: women around 1,800–2,400 kcal a day at 19–30, 1,800–2,200 at 31–50 and 1,600–1,800 after 50; men about 2,400–3,000, 2,200–2,800 and 2,000–2,600 for the same brackets. Age is already part of the BMR equation, so the calorie calculator applies it automatically.