Calorie Deficit Calculator

Weight loss comes down to one piece of arithmetic: eat less than you burn. This calculator turns your goal into a daily number. You enter your current weight, your target weight, how many weeks you give yourself, and your TDEE — the total calories you burn each day. The tool works out how many pounds you need to lose, the daily calorie deficit required, and the exact calorie target to hit each day. A pound of body fat holds roughly 3,500 calories, so losing a pound a week needs a deficit of about 500 calories a day.

Say a teacher in Atlanta weighs 180 pounds, wants to reach 165, and gives herself 15 weeks. She burns about 2,200 calories daily. The calculator sets her target near 1,700 calories a day — a 500-calorie deficit that should drop roughly a pound a week. It also shows the expected weekly loss, so she can sanity-check whether the timeline is realistic before she starts.

Big deficits sound tempting but backfire: extreme restriction slows metabolism, drains energy, and rarely lasts. Most experts suggest keeping targets above roughly 1,200 calories a day for women and 1,500 for men, and checking with a doctor before any aggressive plan. This is a planning aid, not medical advice.