The exact number of calories you should eat per day depends on your body, your goals, and your activity level. Here's a science-based method for calculating your personal target.
What Is a Calorie?
A calorie (technically, a kilocalorie or kcal) is a unit of energy. Your body uses calories to fuel every process — from breathing and organ function to exercise and thinking. When you consistently consume more than you burn, you gain weight. When you consume fewer, you lose weight.
Your TDEE: Total Daily Energy Expenditure
TDEE is the total number of calories your body burns in 24 hours. It has two components:
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Calories burned at complete rest, just to keep your organs running. This is 60–70% of your TDEE.
Activity Factor: Additional calories burned through movement, exercise, and daily activity.
How to Calculate Your Calorie Target
Step 1 — Calculate your BMR (Mifflin-St Jeor formula — most validated for general use):
For men: BMR = (10 × weight kg) + (6.25 × height cm) − (5 × age) + 5
For women: BMR = (10 × weight kg) + (6.25 × height cm) − (5 × age) − 161
Step 2 — Multiply by your activity level:
- Sedentary (desk job, little exercise): BMR × 1.2
- Lightly active (exercise 1–3 days/week): BMR × 1.375
- Moderately active (exercise 3–5 days/week): BMR × 1.55
- Very active (hard exercise 6–7 days/week): BMR × 1.725
The result is your TDEE — the calorie intake that maintains your current weight.
Calorie Targets by Goal
For weight loss: Eat 300–500 calories below your TDEE. This produces a deficit leading to approximately 0.3–0.5 kg of fat loss per week — a sustainable, muscle-preserving rate.
For muscle gain: Eat 200–300 calories above your TDEE combined with progressive resistance training.
For maintenance: Eat at your TDEE.
Why Tracking Calories Works
Studies consistently show that people who track their food intake, even loosely, lose significantly more weight than those who don't. The reason: most people underestimate their calorie intake by 20–40%.
Tracking doesn't need to be perfect to be effective. Even tracking 4–5 days per week builds nutritional awareness that influences choices on untracked days.
Use Pacali's AI photo logging to track your meals in seconds — snap a photo, confirm the AI's analysis, and stay on target without the manual effort.
