How Many Calories Are You Supposed to Consume?

How many calories are you supposed to consume? The answer depends on several variables. First, what is your goal--to lose weight, to gain weight or to maintain your weight? Secondly, a lot depends on your age, your condition and how active you are. A 21-year-old woman who runs 5 miles a day is going to consume more calories than a sedentary 50-year-old man who spends most of his day sitting in an office and then, once he comes home from work, the sofa.

Basic Rules of Thumb

Simply put, if you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. If you want to gain weight, you need to consume more calories than you burn. And if you want to maintain your weight, you need to strike a balance between the calories you burn and the calories you consume.
According to the University of Iowa Healthcare website, The National Academy of Sciences makes the following daily calorie recommendations:
1,600 calories a day for sedentary women and older adults
2,200 calories for most children, teenage girls, active women and sedentary men
2,800 calories for teenage boys, many active men and some very active women
The U.S. government is more succinct, with a flat recommendation of 1,600 calories a day for women and 2,200 calories a day for men.

A Personalized Guide

For a personalized guide to how many calories you, specifically, are supposed to consume, decide what it is you want to do--lose, gain or maintain weight--and then visit an online calorie counter (see Resources, below) to see how many calories you are supposed to consume. The counters factor in age, activity level and current weight.

Lose Weight

To lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn. Using the Calories Per Hour calculator, now housed on the Livestrong.com site, you'll see that a 50-year-old man, 6 feet in height and weighing a normal weight of 185 pounds, burns about 2,238 calories a day if he lives a sedentary lifestyle, which means he spends most of the day lying in bed or sitting around. This same man burns 2,327 calories a day if he is lightly active, and as many as 3,580 calories a day if he is extremely active, doing lots of lifting, loading and sports activities like running or playing basketball. If the sedentary man wants to lose 2 lbs. a week, he needs to cut back his consumption to 1,238 calories a day. The extremely active man, on the other end of the spectrum, needs to cut out 1,000 calories a day to consume 2,580 calories.

Maintain Weight

To maintain weight, you need to strike a balance between calories burned and calories consumed. Again, using the Calories Per Hour calculator, you'll see that a thin 21-year-old who is 6 feet tall but weighs just 160 pounds can maintain his current weight by consuming 2,290 calories a day if he lives a sedentary lifestyle, 2,381 calories if he is lightly active, 2,748 calories if he is moderately active, 3,114 calories if he is very active and 3,664 calories if he is extremely active.

Gain Weight

To gain weight, you need to consume more calories than you burn. A 35-year-old woman, 5 feet 9 inches tall, who weighs just 110 pounds, would likely be considered model-thin and could stand to pack on a few more pounds. Let's say she wants to gain 1 lb. a week. If she just sits around the house all day, gaining weight will be a lot easier than if she regularly runs or power-walks through the neighborhood. If she's sedentary, she can gain a pound a week by consuming 2,235 calories a day. If she's extremely active, she's going to have to do a lot more eating, with a daily consumption of 3,276 calories. If she wants to gain 2 lbs. a week, she will have to consume 2,735 calories a day if she is sedentary or 3,776 calories a day if she is extremely active.