How Many Calories Should a Woman Eat a Day?

Calorie needs are not one-size-fits-all. Several factors combine to set your personal number:

Basal metabolic rate (BMR)

BMR is the energy your body uses at complete rest — breathing, circulation, cell repair. For women, BMR is generally lower than for men of the same weight because of differences in average muscle mass. Common estimation methods (such as the Mifflin-St Jeor equation) factor in weight, height, and age to produce a baseline figure.

Activity level

Your BMR is then multiplied by an activity factor — sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, or very active — to give total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). This is the number of calories that keeps your weight stable. If you want to lose weight gradually, a modest reduction from TDEE — often around 300–500 calories — is a commonly cited general approach, though individual needs vary.

Age

Metabolic rate tends to decline gradually with age, partly due to changes in muscle mass. A woman in her 20s and a woman in her 50s doing the same activities will often have meaningfully different calorie needs. If you are interested in how calorie needs shift across age groups, that topic is covered separately on this site.

Being on a GLP-1 medicine

Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Wegovy (semaglutide) act on appetite-regulating pathways, and many women report a significant drop in hunger and "food noise." This can make it easy to under-eat without realising it — particularly for protein and micronutrients. Understanding your calorie target becomes more practical, not less, once your appetite signals have changed. For a broader look at daily calorie guidance regardless of sex, see general daily calorie guidance, and for specific considerations on Mounjaro, calorie intake on Mounjaro goes into more detail. You can also explore how to work out how many calories to eat as a starting framework.

A note on weight-loss targets

General public health guidance in many countries suggests women aiming to lose weight should not routinely go below around 1,200–1,400 calories a day without clinical supervision, as very low intakes risk nutrient deficiencies and muscle loss. These are general educational ranges, not a personal prescription — your prescriber or doctor is best placed to advise on the right target for you. See our calorie calculator hub for tools to estimate your own numbers.

Working out a number is one thing; hitting it consistently — especially when GLP-1 medicines change how hungry you feel day to day — is another. GLP Trackr's AI food photo scan is the feature most directly useful here: point your camera at a meal and the app returns an instant calorie and protein breakdown, with no manual searching needed. When appetite is low and meals are small, that speed and ease makes the difference between logging consistently and not logging at all.

Once you have set a calorie target inside the app, GLP Trackr tracks your daily intake against it in real time, so you can see at a glance whether you are on track or drifting under — a common pattern for women on GLP-1 medicines who are eating far less than before. The weekly insights view then surfaces patterns over time, such as whether lower-calorie days correlate with lower energy or slower progress, giving you something genuinely useful to bring to your next prescriber appointment.

Any specific calorie goal should be agreed with your prescriber or doctor — they know your full health picture. GLP Trackr helps you record and understand what you are actually eating; it is not a substitute for personalised clinical guidance.

Ready to stop guessing and start seeing your real numbers? Download GLP Trackr on the App Store or Google Play — your first 7 days are completely free.