Calorie Calculation Table

INSTRUCTIONS

Select the row that corresponds to your age, and the column that represents your activity level (see the notes at the bottom of each table for additional details on activity levels), and from there you can easily and accurately tell exactly how many calories you should be eating each day to maintain a healthy body weight.

Additional detailed information below tables!

FEMALES

The age old diet question…

On a keto diet how many calories should I eat to lose weight?

Well first of all let’s look at what an average person should eat to maintain a healthy body weight.

health.gov says that on average a woman should have to 2000 calories per day, and on average a man should have 2500 calories per day.

Again that’s on average and is somewhat of a generalisation, as the calorie level to maintain healthy body weight will be a little bit different depending on your specific age, overall size, and activity level.

HOW MANY CALORIES TO START WITH ON A KETO DIET

In order to not confuse things, start with a target daily calorie amount for women of 2000 calories per day (or whatever the table tells you specifically) and men 2500 calories per day (or, again, whatever the table tells you).

From here you simply stick with that calorie amount for, say, two weeks, and monitor what your weight does.

If you find that you’re starting to lose weight, fantastic!

Keep with that calorie amount and you don’t need to eat any less while your weight is dropping down.

HOW TO ADJUST YOUR CALORIES ON A KETO DIET

However if you find that your weight loss either doesn’t start moving down or it’s just really slow, or that you really want to crank things up from the outset, drop the calories by approximately 20 percent.

So for a woman that means going down to say between 1600 calories, and for a man down to around 2000 calories.

Then simply wait a couple of weeks to see what your weight does.

If after a couple of weeks you find the weight loss kicked into gear, simply stay at the new calorie level.

If you find that it’s still not working for you drop the calories down another 10 to 20 percent.

Additionally, if you actually find that the weight loss has started working for you at whatever calorie level you initially chose you might find that eventually the weight loss will plateau as you start getting lighter and lighter, as your metabolism gradually slows due to the reduced calories.

Expect that at some point weight loss could plateau.

If that does happen simply drop the calories another 10 or 15 percent.

Now, understand that there are a lot of people on the internet who will say “I can maintain a healthy body weight on 1500 calories”, or a really small woman will say that she can maintain body weight on only 1000 calories.

That’s great for them, but that’s probably not you (it certainly wasn’t, and isn’t, me…) and getting conflicting information from shouty people on the internet only serves to confuse you…

YOUR TARGET KETO CALORIES

At the end of the day if you’re are fairly new to the keto diet and dieting in general, you need a target.

I know that you’re getting a lot of conflicting information and random, grey-area, unhelpful information all over the internet and you probably don’t know which way to turn.

You don’t need to be confused any longer… I am giving you a target.

If you’re a woman start with 2000 calories a day.

If you’re a man start with 2500 calories a day.

If you’re totally intent on lowering the calories more then drop them by up to 20 percent, so if you’re a woman go to 1600 calories and if you’re a man go to 2000 calories, and monitor your weight for no less than a couple of weeks on those calorie levels.

Rest assured that you don’t need to go really low on the calories right from the outset.

Doing so can be a recipe for a disaster, not succeeding and falling off your diet because you’re suffering too much on such a small amount of food.

Know that you don’t need to have a massive calorie deficit to lose weight.