“Eat 1,200 calories” might be the most repeated — and most misleading — piece of diet advice on the internet. For a small, sedentary person it may be roughly right. For most adults it is far too low, and diets built on it usually collapse within weeks.
The correct target depends on how much you burn. Here is a simple four-step method to find a calorie goal that is both effective and sustainable.
The Four Steps
- Step 1 — Find your maintenance calories (TDEE). This is what you burn each day. Our TDEE Calculator estimates it from your age, sex, weight, height and activity.
- Step 2 — Subtract about 20%. A moderate deficit protects muscle, keeps hunger manageable, and is far easier to sustain than an aggressive cut.
- Step 3 — Check the pace. Aim to lose roughly 0.5–1% of your body weight per week. A deficit of about 500 kcal a day produces around 0.45 kg of loss per week, which sits comfortably in that range for most people.
- Step 4 — Keep protein high. Around 1.6–2.2 g per kg of body weight helps you lose fat rather than muscle.
Worked example: a 40-year-old man, 90 kg and 180 cm, with a desk job. His BMR is 900 + 1,125 − 200 + 5 = 1,830 kcal. Sedentary, his TDEE is 1,830 × 1.2 = 2,196 kcal. Twenty percent less gives a target of about 1,757 kcal a day — a deficit of roughly 440 kcal, worth about 0.4 kg of loss per week. Notice how different that is from a blanket 1,200 kcal rule.
What about the popular “just subtract 500” rule? It is a decent shortcut for average-sized adults, which is why it is so widely quoted. But for a smaller woman with a TDEE of 1,700 kcal it is nearly a 30% cut — hard to sustain — while for a large, active man burning 3,200 kcal it is barely 16%. The percentage method scales properly to your size, which is why we use it as the default.
Signs Your Deficit Is Too Big
Constant hunger, stalled training performance, poor sleep and losing faster than 1% of your body weight per week all suggest you are cutting too hard. Slow down — the diet you can still follow in month three beats the perfect diet you abandon in week two. These figures are estimates, not medical advice; if you have a medical condition, speak to a doctor before dieting.
Ready to get your own number? Use the TDEE Calculator, pick “Lose weight”, and your daily target is worked out for you.