How Many Calories Should I Burn a Day?

Your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is made up of several components working together. Understanding each one helps you see why calorie burn is so individual.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

BMR is the energy your body uses simply to keep you alive — breathing, circulation, cell repair — at complete rest. It typically accounts for the largest share of daily calorie burn, often around 60–70% of total expenditure. BMR is influenced by body weight, lean muscle mass, height, age, and biological sex.

Activity-Related Calorie Burn

This covers everything beyond rest: structured exercise, walking, household tasks, and general movement throughout the day (sometimes called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT). The more you move, the more active (or exercise) calories you burn. Many fitness trackers distinguish between total calories burned and active calories burned — active calories are the portion on top of your resting baseline.

The Thermic Effect of Food

Digesting and processing food uses energy too — roughly 5–10% of total daily expenditure for most people, with protein requiring more energy to digest than fat or carbohydrate. This is one reason higher-protein eating is often discussed in the context of weight management.

What About a Target Number?

General educational guidance often references a daily deficit of around 500 kcal as a starting point for gradual weight loss (roughly 0.5 kg per week), but this is a broad population average — not a personal prescription. Individual factors vary considerably, and anyone with a medical condition, taking prescription medicine, or with a history of disordered eating should discuss specific targets with their prescriber or doctor rather than applying a blanket figure.

For a deeper look at the other side of the equation, see how many calories a person should consume each day, or explore what a realistic daily calorie burn looks like in practice. If you want to focus on exercise specifically, our guide on how many calories to burn in a workout breaks that down further. All of these figures come together in the GLP Trackr calorie calculator hub, which covers the full picture.

Knowing the theory is one thing — seeing your own numbers day by day is where real insight comes from. GLP Trackr's daily targets feature lets you set a personalised calorie goal and watch your intake and burn come together in one place, without manual arithmetic.

The app's AI photo food scan makes logging meals effortless: point your camera at a plate and get an instant calorie and protein breakdown. On a GLP-1 medicine, portions are often smaller and appetite is unpredictable — the photo scan removes the friction of logging when you are not feeling like eating much anyway.

Pair that with the step and activity targets to keep your active calorie burn visible throughout the day, and the daily morning check-in (weight, energy, sleep, water) gives you the context to understand why some days feel different from others. Over time, the insights tools surface patterns — for example, whether days with more steps correlate with steadier progress on the scale.

All of this is designed for the reality of GLP-1 life, where appetite, energy, and food preferences can shift week to week.

A note on targets: the figures the app helps you track are general wellness tools. Any specific calorie or energy target that relates to your medical situation should be agreed with your prescriber or doctor — they know your full history in a way an app cannot.

Ready to see your numbers in one place? Download GLP Trackr on the App Store or Google Play and try it free for 7 days — no commitment needed.