How many calories should you eat to lose weight?

How it works

Your maintenance comes from your steps, or from four weeks of your own logs once you've measured it. Or type your own. A pound of weight is counted as 3,500 calories, so a pound a week is 500 a day under maintenance. That's where we'd start.

The target never goes under your resting burn, and never under 1,200 a day for women or 1,500 for men. Those are the lowest diets in the 2013 US obesity guideline for people not under a doctor's care. When a pace would cross the floor, the target stops at it and the date moves out.

The date is an estimate. Your maintenance falls as you lose, and water moves the scale from day to day, so judge it by your trend every four weeks and adjust.

Your protein

The typical range is 1.2 to 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day, from the 2025 to 2030 US Dietary Guidelines, counted from a weight nearer your goal if you have more than a fifth of your weight to lose. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours.