Weight Loss Calculator

This weight loss calculator is a great way to determine your daily calorie needs in order to lose the weight you want and reach your ideal weight.

This tool not only gives a recommended calorie intake, it is a goal calculator.

What this means is that it will estimate how long it will take you to lose the weight based on your activity level. Use the guide below when selecting the activity level.

How to Use the Calculator

To use the calculator, select your gender, enter age, current weight, goal weight, height and activity level. Click on calculate to find out how many calories to consume daily for maintaining weight, losing 1 pound a week or a 2 lb a week weight loss. Scroll down the page for help on determining your activity level.

This weight loss tool will not go below a 1,000 a day calorie diet recommendation. If the recommendation falls below this number, you will receive a caution instead of the calorie needs.

It estimates the time based on a 1 or 2 pound a week loss, not any more than that, as this is a sustainable weight loss goal. If you are determined to lose weight, and keep it off, then you want to do it at a pace that will allow you to keep it off for life.

Remember to come back to this page often as you lose weight and estimate how much longer it will take to reach your goal. Your calorie budget will change as your weight changes so be sure you are adjusting as you lose weight.

Weight Loss Calculator

Gender	select genderFemaleMale
Age in Years
Current Wgt	poundskg
Goal Wgt
Height	inchescm
Activity	Sedentary Somewhat Active Moderately Active Very Active Extremely Active
Your Daily Calorie Needs Are:
Maintain Weight
Lose 1lb Weekly
Lose 2 lbs Weekly
Approx. Time to Reach Goal Weight
1 lb Weekly
2 lbs Weekly

Activity Level Guide

Use the below information to determine your activity level to get the proper calorie needs for your weight loss goals.

Sedentary

A sedentary activity means little or no exercise in your daily routine. A person living a sedentary lifestyle is often sitting or lying down while engaged in an activity like working at a desk, reading, watching television and more. If this sounds like you and you get little to no exercises in your typical day, then select sedentary in the weight loss calculator.

Somewhat Active

Select "somewhat active" if your lifestyle includes light exercise one to three days a week. Light exercise might be a walk around the block with a friend, cleaning house, or low intense workouts. The rule of thumb is if you can sing a song while doing your workout, then this would be considered a light exercise.

Moderately Active

Use this selection if you do moderate exercise or sports three to five days a week. A moderate workout would be an exercise that quickens your breath, but you are not out of breath. You can carry on a conversation, but you would not be able to sing a song. The last way to tell is you would start to break out in a light sweat after about 10 minutes into your exercise.

Very Active

This selection would be used if you do hard exercise or sports six to seven days a week. You know you are doing an active workout if you start to break out in a sweat in just a few minutes. Talking will be difficult you will be breathing rapidly. These activities would include hiking, biking, swimming laps and jogging to name a few.

Extremely Active

An extremely active lifestyle would be if you did hard daily exercise or sports plus physical job or exercise two times a day. So if you do intense workouts once (or even twice) a day plus have a physical job, this is the category you would fall into for the weight loss calculator above.

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Proper Calorie Intake

Eating the proper amount of calories can help you reduce weight while still getting all the nutrients you need. Losing weight is not just a matter of reducing calories and hoping for the best.

A person must determine the proper amount of calories for their age, weight, gender and activity level. In addition, a person needs to ensure they are not going to low on their calorie intake.

How Many Calories Do You Need?

The amount of calories needed for each person to lose weight is based on several factors.

The above calculator uses the information you provide such as age, gender, and current activity level to determine a safe number of calories to eat daily in order to lose the weight and reach your goal.

To lose the weight and, here’s the important part, keep the weight off, you want to not cut food intake drastically.

Although the above weight loss calculator will go down to 1,000 calories per day (and no lower), the American College of Sports Medicine recommends that women eat no fewer than 1,200 calories per day and that men eat no fewer than 1,800 calories per day.Check with your doctor if you plan on reducing your calories lower that these recommendations.

Calories Too Low?

When reducing calories to lose weight don’t go too low. Extreme calorie restriction can impact your health and prohibit your ability to lose weight. When you limit your calories too much, you may not be getting all the necessary nutrients you need from the foods you are eating.

Calorie reduction that is too low can reduce leptin according to research. Leptin is a hormone that helps to regulate appetite. Low levels of this may lead to hunger which can lead to overeating when hunger levels go too low.

Research also shows that low-calorie dieting increases stress and the release of the stress hormone, cortisol. This release of the stress hormone may cause the body to conserve energy and lows down the metabolism to fight against what the body perceives as starvation. Basically, the body is going into a survival mode. While you might think that cutting calories even more than what is recommended is sure way to lose weight, the changes in your body and stress levels could cause weight gain.

Losing Weight Through Exercise

To sustain your weight loss, you should aim for losing 1 – 2 pounds per week. To reach the 1 – 2 pound goal, a person should reduce calories by 500 to 1000 calories per day.

However, this calorie reduction may take you below the recommended calorie intake. So how are you supposed to lose weight?

Adding exercise in your daily routine can help you reach your weight loss goals. The calories burned during exercise contribute to the calorie deficit you need for weight loss.

By combining reduced calorie intake with an exercise routine, you can lose the 1 – 2 pounds you are aiming for. With exercise, you can still lose weight without severely limiting your calorie intake. This will prevent your metabolism from slowing and ensure your rate of weight loss remains steady.

Additional Calculators

BMI Calculator
This online tool will give you your Body Mass Index (BMI). The BMI is used as a tool to gage if you have potential health risks due to your current weight.

BMR Calculator
The Basal Metabolic Rate calculator will help you determine your calories needs based on your age, gender, height, weight and activity level.

Exercise Calorie Calculator
Find out how many calories you burned during your workout with this free online tool.

Ideal Body Weight
Here's a calculator that will approximate your ideal body weight. This one uses the Miller formula and adjusts for frame size.