Knowing how many calories you should eat per day is essential if you are dieting and want to lose weight, if you want to maintain your current weight, or if you want to gain a controlled amount of weight. Once you figure out how many calories you burn per day, you can gauge how many calories you should eat per day.
Instructions
1. Use a calorie counter, such as the one from the American Cancer Society listed under "Reference" at the bottom of this page, to calculate how many calories you need to consume per day to maintain your current weight. This is based on your current weight, gender and level of daily activity. A calorie counter is only an estimate of the calories you need to maintain your current weight. If you want an accurate reading, you can get tested with a nutritionist.
2. Decide what your weight goal is. If you want to lose weight at a rate of about one pound per week, you need 500 calories less than the calories needed to maintain your current weight, which the calorie counter calculated for you in Step 1. This can be done by eating 500 fewer calories, or by eating 200 fewer calories and burning 300 calories through exercise.
3. Count your calories as accurately as possible and keep track of how many calories you are burning through exercise and daily activity. You can do this by recording your activities in a journal. Refer to the link under "Resource" for an online calculator that will estimate how many calories you burned during exercise.
