Nutrition
There's no single right number — it depends on your body and how active you are. But you can land on a sensible, personalized estimate in a couple of minutes. Here's how the math works, what the general ranges look like, and how to adjust for your goal.
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the energy your body uses just to keep you alive — breathing, circulation, cell repair — before you move at all. The most widely validated way to estimate it is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which uses your weight, height, age, and sex. It's accurate to within about 10% for most people, which is plenty for setting a starting point.
Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is your BMR plus everything you do in a day. You estimate it by multiplying BMR by an activity factor — from about 1.2 for a sedentary lifestyle up to around 1.9 for very heavy training or physical work. TDEE is the number that actually matters: it's the intake at which your weight stays roughly stable.
Public dietary guidelines give rough population averages, useful only as a sanity check against your own estimate:
Your personal number can sit anywhere in or outside these bands based on your size, muscle mass, and movement — which is exactly why a calculated estimate beats a generic figure.
Treat the result as a starting point. Track your weight and energy over two to four weeks and nudge the number by 100–200 kcal if reality differs from the estimate.
The free calorie & macro calculator runs the Mifflin-St Jeor math for you and suggests a macro split for your goal. From there, learn how to set macros for weight loss and how to track them without it taking over your life — then use a weekly meal planner to choose meals that fit.
Once you know your number, RecipeOK helps you choose recipes that fit it and totals the calories across your week.
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