As Ive explained, your daily calorie consumption is probably the most crucial part of your diet program regardless of what your goal is. And, the starting place for figuring out how much calories you need to eat daily revolves around something called your maintenance level. Where your body is at you burn the same number of calories and consume, your maintenance level is. Meaning, when Calories In = Calories Out, you achieve your maintenance level. Heres an example. Lets say 2500 calories burn from a combination of regular activities, exercise, and your body doing. Meaning 2500 calories is the everyday maintenance level in this example.

Your weight won’t go down or up. Everything will just be maintained. Why? As you ate the same amount of calories that means, and you burned were used by the body. There was no surplus or deficit. You’ll need to be BELOW your maintenance level that you end up burning off more calories than you consume. When that happens, your body fat that is stored will be burned for energy. You’ll need to be AT your maintenance level that you’re consuming and burning the number of calories to maintain your weight. To build muscle, you want to create a surplus.

You’ll need to be ABOVE your maintenance level that you’re consuming more calories than you burn. When that occurs, your body may have the extra calories you need to create new muscle tissue. Sounds pretty good, right? The thing is, in order to perform any of those things, you first need to find out what the calorie maintenance level will be so you know precisely what it’s you’ll need to be above, below or with.

Therefore, lets determine what yours is. How To Calculate Your Calorie Maintenance Level – In case it’s not obvious enough, calorie maintenance levels are very different for everybody because all of us have different daily calorie requirements. Even when you’re the same age, height and weight as someone and have the exact same activity level and goals may still have, you can both still have very different calorie maintenance levels along with everyday calorie requirements generally. Fortunately though, there are a few fast and simple ways to get an accurate estimate of what the everyday calorie maintenance level is.

Here are my favored methods. Method .1: Body Weight x 14-17 = Estimated Daily Calorie Maintenance Level – simply take your current bodyweight in pounds along with multiply it by 14 along with 17.