If your goal is to burn fat or build muscle, it’s important to fuel your body with the right amount of energy every day.

Everything that our bodies do requires energy. We get that energy from the food we eat, measured in kilocalories (“calories” for short).

There’s a certain number of calories that your body needs just to maintain itself—we call this your maintenance level of calories.

In order to burn fat, you need to eat below your maintenance level of calories each day for an extended period of time. This is called being in a calorie deficit. Staying in a calorie deficit forces your body to tap into the energy stores in your body fat—which causes you to lose weight.

Building muscle, however, is a calorie-expensive activity. If you want to build muscle effectively, you need to eat more than your maintenance level of calories. This is called being in a calorie surplus.

To eat the right amount of calories for your fitness goals, you’ll first need to figure out what your maintenance level of calories is—that is, the number of calories you can eat without gaining or losing weight. Follow the steps below to find that number:

Step 1: Get a Starting Number

You can use an online calculator to get a rough idea of how many calories your body needs for maintenance. I suggest using either the Total Daily Energy Expenditure calculator to estimate how many calories your body burns each day or Bodybuilding.com’s calorie calculator for estimating your maintenance level of calories.

You’ll notice that the numbers produced by these two sources may be quite different from each other—due to the fact that they use different equations to estimate calorie expenditure. It’s likely that neither of these numbers is your actual maintenance level of calories, but they give us a good idea of where to start. To find your actual maintenance level of calories, you’ll have to test one of these numbers and see how your body responds.

Step 2: Test Your Starting Number

Over the course of a week, use a calorie tracking app like MyFitnessPal to track the number of calories you eat every day, and try to eat the exact number of calories you calculated as your starting number (either from Bodybuilding.com’s calorie calculator or your estimated TDEE). At the beginning and end of the week, weigh yourself on the same scale and take note of any change to your body weight from the beginning to the end of the week.

Step 3: Adjust Until Weight Stabilizes

By the end of your testing week, if your weight goes up, then it is likely that the amount of calories you eat every day is above your actual maintenance level of calories (i.e., your actual maintenance level of calories is below what you calculated). Try again another week after reducing your daily calorie goal by between 100 and 250 calories. Eat a lower amount of calories every day and weigh yourself again at the end of the week. If your weight continues to go up, keep reducing calories as needed until your weight stabilizes. Once your weight stops going up, you will have found your actual maintenance level of calories.

If, however, your weight goes down by the end of your testing week, then it is likely that your starting number is too low to be your actual maintenance level of calories. In that case, add between 100 and 250 calories to your daily calorie goal and test that number for another week. Weigh yourself at the end of the week, and keep adjusting your daily intake every week until your weight stabilizes.

If your weight doesn’t change during the first week of tracking your calories, then the number you calculated is probably close enough to your actual maintenance level of calories to base your daily calorie goal on.

Deciding Your Daily Calorie Goal

Once you find your actual maintenance level of calories, then you can set a daily calorie goal based on your fitness goals.

As we mentioned above, in order to burn fat, you’ll need to eat below your maintenance level of calories every day. As a general rule of thumb, it takes about 3500 calories to burn a single pound of fat. So to lose 1 pound of fat per week you would need to eat 500 calories below your maintenance level every day. To lose 2 pounds of fat per week, you would need to eat 1,000 calories below maintenance every day (although experts don’t recommend going below a 1,000 calorie deficit to stay healthy).[1]

On the other hand, if you want to build muscle, you’ll need to eat above your maintenance level of calories (while also doing muscle-building resistance training at least twice per week). 1 lb of muscle contains 700 calories—however it takes much more than 700 calories to build 1 lb of muscle. This isn’t a well-studied question, although many experts suggest that it takes 2000 calories or more to build 1 lb of muscle. On a day-to-day basis, we recommend eating 10–20% above your maintenance calories every day for an average weight gain of 0.25–0.5% of your body weight per week.[2, 3]

Tracking for Success

Once you have decided what your daily calorie goal will be, continue using a calorie tracking app like MyFitnessPal to keep an eye on your intake every day. You’ll get the most benefit from tracking if you enter your food before you eat it–while you’re still planning what to put on your plate. This will allow you to make any necessary adjustments to keep the meal within your daily calorie goal.

Another effective strategy for eating within your daily calorie goal is to practice meal planning. You can use a calorie tracking app to plan out all of your meals the day before or the week before. Having a plan for what to prepare and eat for every meal and snack can take a lot of the guesswork out of meal times. Preparing your meals and snacks ahead of time will also help you to control your portions and stay within your daily calorie goal.

For more help with how to plan and meal prep effectively, check out my Trainer’s Guide to Meal Prep ebook. I also have lots of examples of meal plans that feature meal prep on my website. 

[1] Keep in mind that these are general recommendations and studies show that there are a lot of factors that play into the exact amount of calories needed to lose weight. These recommendations are good, however, to give you a rough idea of how many calories you’ll need to get your fat loss going. Luff C. How Many Calories Do You Need to Burn to Lose a Pound? Verywellfit.com 2022

[2] Van de Walle G. What Is bulking? Steps, diet, and more. Healthline.com 2020

[3] Iraki J, Fitschen P, Espinar S, Helms E. Nutrition recommendations for bodybuilders in the off-season: a narrative review. Sports (Basel) 2019 Jul; 7(7): 154. DOI: 10.3390/sports7070154

JAYD HARRISON (JAYDIGAINS)

Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and affiliate streamer on Twitch. She has been an active trainer since 2014 and now specializes in comprehensive weight loss coaching. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch on Tuesdays & Thursdays 11am EST for a Fit Q&A session.

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