How Many Calories Do You Need a Day?

Your daily calorie need — sometimes called your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) — is the amount of energy your body uses across everything from breathing and digestion to movement and exercise. Several factors determine where your number falls:

• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): the calories your body burns at complete rest, keeping organs functioning. This accounts for the majority of most people's daily needs.
• Activity level: someone with a desk job and light exercise will need meaningfully fewer calories than someone doing physical labour or regular intense training.
• Age: metabolic rate tends to slow gradually over time, so calorie needs often decrease with age.
• Body composition: muscle tissue burns more energy than fat tissue at rest, so people with more lean mass generally have a higher BMR.

How many calories do women need a day?

General population guidelines suggest that adult women typically need roughly 1,600–2,400 kcal per day, while adult men typically need around 2,000–3,000 kcal — but these are broad ranges. Individual variation is significant, and these figures shift based on the factors above. If you are on a prescribed GLP-1 medicine, your prescriber or doctor may have discussed a calorie target specific to your circumstances; always follow their guidance over any general figure.

Why this matters on a GLP-1 journey

Mounjaro and Wegovy commonly reduce appetite and food noise, which can lead to eating far less than usual. While a calorie reduction is generally part of the goal, eating too little — particularly too little protein — can undermine energy, muscle maintenance, and overall wellbeing. Knowing your approximate daily need helps you aim for a sensible range rather than accidentally under-fuelling. For more on how to understand your actual intake, see tracking how many calories you consume and what your daily eating pattern looks like.

If you want a more personalised starting point, our calorie calculator for GLP-1 users can help you estimate your daily requirement based on your own details.

Knowing your calorie target is one thing — consistently hitting it while appetite fluctuates on a GLP-1 medicine is another. GLP Trackr's AI food scanning makes this practical: point your camera at a meal and get an instant calorie and protein breakdown, so logging doesn't feel like extra work on days when eating is already an effort.

Once you have an estimate of your daily need, you can set it as a calorie target inside the app. Your food log feeds directly into that target, giving you a running total throughout the day. The app also tracks protein and other key nutrients — useful when reduced appetite means every meal needs to count nutritionally. For context on how your logged intake compares over time, the everyday calorie needs guide covers longer-term patterns worth being aware of.

GLP Trackr's daily insights can then surface patterns — like whether lower-calorie days correlate with changes in energy or weight progress — turning your logs into something genuinely useful rather than just a record.

A note on targets: general calorie figures are a useful starting point, but your prescriber or doctor is best placed to advise on the right range for you, especially if you have any health conditions alongside your weight-management journey. GLP Trackr helps you record and visualise what you're eating so you can have more informed conversations with them — it isn't a substitute for their guidance.

Ready to put a number to your daily target and start tracking it? Download GLP Trackr on the App Store or Google Play — your first 7 days are completely free.