How many calories should I eat a day?
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To stay at the same weight, eat about what you burn. For the average American taking under 5,000 steps a day, that’s about 1,540 to 1,880 calories a day for a woman and 1,950 to 2,380 for a man. To lose, start about 500 a day under the middle of your own range, and never under your floor. Under 5,000 steps, the floor leaves room for a cut of only about 300, so walking more comes first.
The 2,000 on food labels is a round number. The FDA calls it “a general guide for nutrition advice” and says your needs can be higher or lower with your age, sex, height, weight and activity. It’s the yardstick the label uses, and your own number can sit well above or below it.
The simple version
Food is income, the calories you burn are spending, and your weight is the savings. Bring in what you spend and the savings hold. Bring in a little less and they shrink. The trend over weeks shows which way it’s going.
The numbers
| You | To hold your weight | To lose: 500 under the middle, or the floor |
|---|---|---|
| Average woman, under 5,000 steps | 1,540 to 1,880 | 1,430, her resting burn |
| Average woman, 7,500 to 9,999 steps | 1,990 to 2,430 | about 1,710 |
| Average man, under 5,000 steps | 1,950 to 2,380 | 1,800, his resting burn |
| Average man, 7,500 to 9,999 steps | 2,510 to 3,070 | about 2,290 |
The average is from CDC measurements for 2021 to 2023: 5 foot 3½ and 172 pounds for women, 5 foot 9 and 199 pounds for men. At age 40, their resting burn from the Mifflin-St Jeor formula is about 1,430 and 1,800, times 1.2 under 5,000 steps a day or 1.55 at 7,500 to 9,999, the step bands our calculators use, give or take 10%. 500 a day is 3,500 a week, the old figure for a pound of fat, which fits best for people with more fat to lose.
The floor: never below your resting burn, and never below 1,200 calories a day for women or 1,500 for men without a doctor. Those are the low end of the diets in the 2013 US obesity guideline.
What to do
- Get your range from your steps on the calories calculator, and your target from calories to lose.
- Check it against your scale after four weeks.
7 sources
- US Food and Drug Administration, How to understand and use the Nutrition Facts label, checked 2026-11-10fda.gov
- 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
- Jensen et al., 2013 AHA/ACC/TOS guideline for the management of overweight and obesity in adults, Circulation, 2014pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Hall, What is the required energy deficit per unit weight loss?, International Journal of Obesity, 2008pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
