How many calories do I burn a day?
For the average American man taking under 5,000 steps a day, about 1,950 to 2,380 calories. For the average American woman, about 1,540 to 1,880. At 7,500 to 9,999 steps it’s about 2,510 to 3,070 for him and 1,990 to 2,430 for her. A bigger body burns more, and your steps move the number more than anything else you control. Get your own range from your steps.
A calculator prints something like 2,347, which looks exact. It’s one point inside a range. The formula for your resting burn is within 10% for about four people in five, and the activity level you pick adds more error on top. So your real burn sits in a band a few hundred calories wide.
The simple version
Your day is a pie. The biggest slice, more than half and often far more, is your body keeping itself running. Digesting food takes a thin slice. Moving takes the rest, and that’s the slice that changes most from one person to the next.
How we got the numbers
The average American man is 5 foot 9 (68.9 inches) and 199 pounds, and the average woman 5 foot 3½ (63.5 inches) and 172 pounds, in CDC measurements from 2021 to 2023. At 40, the Mifflin-St Jeor formula gives them a resting burn of about 1,800 and 1,430 calories a day. Our calculators multiply resting burn by your step band, from 1.2 under 5,000 steps a day to 1.9 at 12,500 and more, and give a range 10% either side. The step bands come from a 2004 review of pedometer studies.
| Steps a day | Average man | Average woman |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5,000 | 1,950 to 2,380 | 1,540 to 1,880 |
| 7,500 to 9,999 | 2,510 to 3,070 | 1,990 to 2,430 |
| 10,000 to 12,499 | 2,800 to 3,420 | 2,210 to 2,710 |
What to do
- Put your own body and your daily steps into the calories from your steps calculator.
- Treat the middle as a starting guess. Four weeks of meals and morning weigh-ins give your real number.
4 sources
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FastStats: body measurements (anthropometric reference data, August 2021 to August 2023), checked 2026-11-10cdc.gov
- Mifflin et al., A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Tudor-Locke and Bassett, How many steps/day are enough? Preliminary pedometer indices for public health, Sports Medicine, 2004pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Frankenfield, Bias and accuracy of resting metabolic rate equations in non-obese and obese adults, Clinical Nutrition, 2013pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
