Before you can track your calories against a target, you need to pick a target. But this is a surprisingly easy place to get stuck, and a lot of people do.
You put your information into one calculator, and it says you burn 2,400 calories a day. Another says 2,700. A third wants your body fat percentage and asks whether you’re “lightly active” or “moderately active.”
So, which calculator is the best?
This is one of those questions that probably gets asked a lot on Google, but the truth is that there isn’t really one. In fact, I could easily just whip one up myself with a little code right here:
You burn around: calories per day.
To lose weight at a healthy rate, consume around: calories per day.
Most calorie calculators, including this one and the USDA’s official DRI calculator, use one of two generally accepted equations: the Mifflin–St Jeor or Katch–McArdle. These equations were developed by scientists who analyzed how people’s body measurements relate to the energy they burn at rest. They are approximations based on measurements taken from a sample of people. But there’s still variance among individuals, and if you take two people who look identical on paper, it’s entirely possible that one person burns hundreds more calories per day than the other.
Then there’s the additional question of how “active” you actually are. Does being moderately active mean you burn 300 more calories than someone who’s lightly active? More? Less? There’s no way to know exactly.
Bottom line: no “best” calorie calculator will be able to tell you exactly what to do. What they can do, though, is at least get you somewhere in the ballpark to start. But odds are it will take a few adjustments to get things right for you. And that’s the key takeaway: success is found in consistent behaviors and meaningful adjustments, not in the initial discovery of perfect truth.
In other words: use the calculator to pick a reasonable starting point, stick with it for a few weeks or so, assess the results, and make a small adjustment if it’s needed. After another few weeks, assess the results again. Rinse and repeat. It’s boring, but it works.