Short answer: most adults need roughly 1,800–2,800 calories per day, but your exact number depends on your size, activity, and goal. Here's how to find yours in about two minutes — no complicated maths.

Start with maintenance calories

Your maintenance calories are what you burn on a normal day. The simplest estimate:

  • Sedentary (desk job, little exercise): body weight in kg × 26–28
  • Moderately active (some walking, 2–3 workouts/week): kg × 30–32
  • Very active (physical job or daily training): kg × 34–36

Example: a 75 kg person with a desk job → 75 × 27 ≈ 2,000 calories/day to maintain.

This is an estimate, not a lab measurement. It's a starting point — you'll fine-tune it (more on that below).

Then adjust for your goal

  • Lose weight: eat 300–500 fewer than maintenance. That's roughly 0.3–0.5 kg of fat loss per week — the sustainable zone.
  • Maintain: eat at maintenance.
  • Gain muscle: eat 200–300 more than maintenance, with enough protein.

Aggressive deficits (1,000+ calories) backfire: hunger spikes, energy crashes, and most people quit within weeks. A moderate deficit you can actually sustain beats a brutal one you abandon.

The desi diet reality check

Here's where theory meets the dinner table. A typical day — paratha breakfast, roti-salan lunch, chai with biscuits, biryani dinner — can quietly land at 2,500–3,000+ calories, mostly from carbs and cooking oil.

You don't need to give up your food. The biggest wins are usually:

  • Oil and ghee: the #1 hidden calorie source. One extra tablespoon of oil = ~120 calories. Measure for a week and you'll be surprised.
  • Portion creep: an extra roti here, a second helping of rice there. Tracking for a couple of weeks reveals the pattern fast.
  • Liquid calories: sugary chai, juices, and sodas add up without filling you up.

Fine-tune with real data (the part most people skip)

Your estimate is a guess. Your body is the truth. Do this:

  1. Eat your target calories consistently for 2 weeks.
  2. Weigh yourself 2–3 times a week, same time of day.
  3. Weight dropping? Your deficit is working. Flat? Cut another 150–200 calories. Dropping too fast (over ~0.7 kg/week)? Eat a little more.

Consistency matters more than precision — the same principle behind AI calorie tracking. A consistent estimate you actually follow beats a perfect number you don't.

The bottom line

Find your maintenance with the quick formula, subtract 300–500 for fat loss, watch the hidden oil, and adjust based on the scale after two weeks. That's the whole system. Try CalsFlow free — describe your meals in plain words and it handles the calorie maths for you.

CalsFlow provides nutrition estimates, not medical advice.