Is 1,500 calories a day enough to lose weight?
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For many women, yes, and how much it cuts depends on your steps. For the average American woman, 1,500 is about 210 calories under her burn at under 5,000 steps a day and about 710 under at 7,500 to 9,999, both above her resting burn. For most men it’s too steep: it’s the lowest a man should go without a doctor, and it’s under the average American man’s resting burn of about 1,800. Check it against your own range first.
1,500 is a round number, and it sits in the 2013 US obesity guideline twice: at the top of the women’s diet range (1,200 to 1,500 a day) and at the bottom of the men’s (1,500 to 1,800). So it’s a common target for women and a floor for men.
The simple version
A calorie target is only big or small next to what you burn. 1,500 is a gentle cut for a small woman who burns 1,800 and a crash diet for a big man who burns 3,000.
Four bodies, all 40
| You | Resting burn | Burns, under 5,000 steps | Burns, 7,500 to 9,999 steps | 1,500 is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Woman, 5 foot 2, 130 pounds | 1,210 | 1,310 to 1,600 | 1,690 to 2,070 | about her maintenance under 5,000 steps, 380 under the middle at 7,500 |
| Average American woman, 5 foot 3½, 172 pounds | 1,430 | 1,540 to 1,880 | 1,990 to 2,430 | 210 under the middle, or 710 at 7,500 steps |
| Man, 5 foot 10, 180 pounds | 1,730 | 1,870 to 2,290 | 2,420 to 2,950 | under his resting burn |
| Average American man, 5 foot 9, 199 pounds | 1,800 | 1,950 to 2,380 | 2,510 to 3,070 | under his resting burn |
Resting burn is from the Mifflin-St Jeor formula. The daily burns are the ranges our calculators give: resting burn times 1.2 under 5,000 steps or 1.55 at 7,500 to 9,999, give or take 10%. The average bodies are from CDC measurements for 2021 to 2023.
What to do
- Put your own body and steps into the calories to lose calculator. It gives a target that stays above your floor.
- If 1,500 is under your resting burn, pick a higher target. You’ll lose a little slower and stay above the line.
- Keep protein in the typical range, 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight a day. It takes some planning at 1,500, so build each meal around it.
6 sources
- Jensen et al., 2013 AHA/ACC/TOS guideline for the management of overweight and obesity in adults, Circulation, 2014pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.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
- Frankenfield, Bias and accuracy of resting metabolic rate equations in non-obese and obese adults, Clinical Nutrition, 2013pubmed.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
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FastStats: body measurements (anthropometric reference data, August 2021 to August 2023), checked 2026-11-10cdc.gov
- US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025 to 2030, protein, checked 2026-11-10realfood.gov
