How Many Calories Should I Eat a Day? Chart by Age and Sex

Most adult women need about 1,600 to 2,400 calories a day, and most adult men about 2,000 to 3,000, according to the US Dietary Guidelines. A moderately active 30-year-old woman needs about 2,000 and a moderately active 30-year-old man about 2,600. Needs fall with age and rise with height, weight and activity. To lose weight, eat somewhat less and adjust from your weight trend.

Below: the full chart by age, sex and activity, how to personalise it, what a calorie deficit really does over time, and what Apple Watch says people actually burn.

Daily calorie needs by age, sex and activity

Age	Men: sedentary	Men: moderately active	Men: active	Women: sedentary	Women: moderately active	Women: active
19 to 20	2,600	2,800	3,000	2,000	2,200	2,400
21 to 25	2,400	2,800	3,000	2,000	2,200	2,400
26 to 30	2,400	2,600	3,000	1,800	2,000	2,400
31 to 35	2,400	2,600	3,000	1,800	2,000	2,200
36 to 40	2,400	2,600	2,800	1,800	2,000	2,200
41 to 45	2,200	2,600	2,800	1,800	2,000	2,200
46 to 50	2,200	2,400	2,800	1,800	2,000	2,200
51 to 55	2,200	2,400	2,800	1,600	1,800	2,200
56 to 60	2,200	2,400	2,600	1,600	1,800	2,200
61 to 65	2,000	2,400	2,600	1,600	1,800	2,000
66 to 70	2,000	2,200	2,600	1,600	1,800	2,000
71 to 75	2,000	2,200	2,600	1,600	1,800	2,000
76 and over	2,000	2,200	2,400	1,600	1,800	2,000

Calories per day to maintain weight. Source: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025, Table A2-2, based on the National Academies' energy requirement equations.

What the activity levels mean:

• Sedentary: only the activity of daily living.
• Moderately active: daily living plus the equivalent of walking 1.5 to 3 miles a day (2.4 to 4.8 km, about 3,000 to 6,000 extra steps) at a brisk pace.
• Active: daily living plus the equivalent of walking more than 3 miles a day (4.8 km).

Two things to know about this chart. First, it assumes a reference body size: a man 5 ft 10 in and 154 lb (178 cm, 70 kg), a woman 5 ft 4 in and 126 lb (163 cm, 57 kg). If you are taller or heavier, your needs are higher; if smaller, lower. Second, the newest Dietary Guidelines (2025-2030) no longer print a table. They state that the calories you need depend on your age, sex, height, weight and activity, which is why a personal estimate beats any chart.

How to personalise your number

1. Estimate your resting burn with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, a widely used formula that was tested against measured resting burn in 498 adults:
   • Men: 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age + 5
   • Women: 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age − 161
2. Multiply by an activity factor, typically from about 1.2 (desk job, little exercise) to about 1.7 (very active). Our TDEE calculator does both steps.
3. Check it against reality. Eat close to that number for two to three weeks and watch your weight trend. If your average weight is stable, that is your maintenance. Single days are noisy, so use a weekly average.

Example: a 35-year-old woman, 165 cm (5 ft 5 in) and 68 kg (150 lb): 680 + 1,031 − 175 − 161 = about 1,375 calories at rest. With moderate activity (about 1.55), that is roughly 2,130 calories a day to maintain her weight, close to the chart's 2,000 for her age, adjusted up for her larger size.

How many calories to lose weight

Eat less than your maintenance and let the trend guide you. But expect weight to change more slowly than the old rule suggests.

The classic rule says a pound of fat is 3,500 calories, so a 500-calorie daily deficit loses a pound a week indefinitely. Research from the US National Institutes of Health showed why that overpredicts: as you lose weight, you burn less, so the deficit shrinks. Its replacement rule of thumb for an average adult:

Every 10 calories a day you permanently cut leads to about 1 pound of eventual weight loss (in metric, about 24 calories a day per kilogram), with half of it in about a year and nearly all of it in about three years.

Daily change	Old 3,500-calorie rule	NIH rule of thumb
Eat 250 fewer calories a day	26 lb (12 kg) in one year, and still falling	About 25 lb (11 kg) eventually, about half in the first year
Eat 500 fewer calories a day	52 lb (24 kg) in one year, and still falling	About 50 lb (23 kg) eventually, about half in the first year

So early weight loss is faster (partly water), then it slows, and a lasting change in habits matters more than a dramatic first month. If progress stalls, metabolic adaptation explains why and what helps, and calorie deficit but gaining weight covers the common causes of a stalled scale.

Keep protein up while you cut. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines set protein at 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight a day, which helps preserve muscle in a deficit. Our protein intake calculator works it out.

What Apple Watch says people burn

We looked at what Apple Watch estimates Bodly users actually burn on a typical day (resting plus active calories), over the last 60 days:

	People	Total burned per day (typical)	Middle half of people	Of which active
Women	41	2,080	1,800 to 2,380	446
Men	71	2,600	2,130 to 3,250	582

That lines up well with the guidelines for moderately active adults. But treat watch calories as a guide: wrist-based active calorie estimates can be off by 20% to 40%, depending on the activity. How accurate are Apple Watch calories explains when to trust them and when not to "eat back" your exercise calories.

Make it easy to track

Knowing your number only helps if you can see what you actually eat. Bodly estimates the calories and macros in a meal from a photo, keeps a weight trend that smooths out daily noise, and shows your Apple Watch activity next to it, so you can see whether you are really eating at maintenance, below it, or above it.

When to get advice

Talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before eating much less than the chart for your age, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding (needs rise by about 340 to 450 calories a day later in pregnancy), have diabetes or another medical condition, take medication that affects appetite or weight (including GLP-1 drugs), or have a history of disordered eating.

Sources

• US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025, Appendix 2: Estimated Calorie Needs.
• US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030.
• Mifflin MD, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1990).
• Hall KD, et al. Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight. The Lancet (2011).