How Many Calories Should You Eat to Lose Weight?
Weight loss comes down to one thing: eating fewer calories than you burn, consistently. The trick is knowing your number — your TDEE — and taking a sensible deficit off it instead of starving.
Step 1: your BMR (what you burn at rest)
Your Basal Metabolic Rate is the energy your body uses just to stay alive. A common estimate (Mifflin-St Jeor):
- Men: 10×weight(kg) + 6.25×height(cm) − 5×age + 5
- Women: 10×weight(kg) + 6.25×height(cm) − 5×age − 161
A 70 kg, 170 cm, 30-year-old man has a BMR of roughly 1,600 kcal.
Step 2: your TDEE (what you burn in a day)
Multiply BMR by an activity factor:
- Sedentary (desk job, little exercise): ×1.2
- Lightly active (1–3 workouts/week): ×1.375
- Moderately active (3–5/week): ×1.55
- Very active (6–7/week): ×1.725
That 1,600 BMR × 1.375 ≈ 2,200 kcal/day TDEE — the calories that keep you at your current weight.
Step 3: the deficit (the actual answer)
To lose fat, eat below your TDEE:
- ~500 kcal/day deficit ≈ 0.5 kg fat loss/week — sustainable for most.
- A 10–20% deficit off TDEE is a good guardrail (here, ~1,750–1,980 kcal).
So our example person eats about 1,700–1,750 kcal/day to lose ~0.5 kg/week. Bigger deficits lose faster but cost muscle, energy, and adherence — slower is usually smarter.
Don't crash-diet
Dropping to 1,000–1,200 kcal backfires: you lose muscle, your metabolism and NEAT drop, hunger spikes, and you rebound. A modest deficit you can hold for months beats an aggressive one you quit in a week.
Protein protects your muscle in a deficit
When calories are low, adequate protein is what keeps the weight you lose as fat rather than muscle. Aim for the higher end of the range — see how much protein per day for the grams-per-kg targets.
Hitting your number with Indian food
The deficit only works if you actually track it — roti, rice, dal, oil, and ghee add up fast and are easy to underestimate. Learn the basics in our macro tracking guide, and for a ready structure use an Indian diet plan for weight loss.
Let NYUS calculate it for you
NYUS computes your BMR and TDEE from your stats, sets a sensible deficit for your goal, and tracks every meal against 1,000+ Indian and global foods so you can see your daily number in real time — and it recalibrates as your weight changes, so the target stays accurate.
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Get NYUS on Google PlayFrequently asked questions
How many calories should I eat to lose weight?
Eat about 10 to 20 percent below your TDEE, or roughly a 500 kcal/day deficit for ~0.5 kg of fat loss per week. First estimate your TDEE (BMR times an activity factor), then subtract the deficit. For a 70 kg moderately active man (~2,200 TDEE), that's about 1,700 to 1,980 kcal/day.
What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?
BMR is what your body burns at complete rest. TDEE is your total daily burn including movement and exercise, calculated as BMR times an activity multiplier (1.2 sedentary up to 1.725 very active). You set your weight-loss target off TDEE, not BMR.
Is a 1,200-calorie diet good for weight loss?
Usually no. For most adults it's an aggressive crash deficit that costs muscle, energy and adherence, and tends to rebound. A modest deficit you can sustain for months loses fat more reliably.
How much weight can I lose in a week safely?
About 0.5 to 1 percent of bodyweight per week, roughly 0.5 kg for many people, from a ~500 kcal daily deficit. Faster loss increasingly comes from muscle and water rather than fat.