How Many Calories to Lose 0.5 kg a Week

A kilogram of body fat stores about 7,700 calories, so half a kilo is roughly 3,850. To lose that in a week you need a weekly deficit of 3,850, which works out to about 550 a day. The calories you eat are your maintenance minus 550: maintain at 2,200 and you aim for 1,650, maintain at 2,000 and you aim for 1,450. This is the one page in the set where the number lines up exactly with the tool — the embedded calculator is preset to its metric steady pace of 0.5 kg a week, so it shows the same ~550-calorie deficit, no conversion gap. To see that deficit broken into food terms, use the Calorie Deficit Calculator.

Half a kilo a week is the metric world's version of the one-pound default, and it sits squarely in the safe 0.25–1 kg range. It is the pace most guidance points to because it balances visible progress against a deficit you can actually keep — big enough to matter, small enough to protect muscle and survive real life. Everything here reads off your maintenance, the calories you burn on a normal day, which the TDEE Calculator estimates for you if you want to confirm the baseline before you set a target.

A 550-calorie deficit is modest day to day, but it compounds. Half a kilo a week is roughly 2 kg a month and about 26 kg over a year of consistency, all from a gap most people can hold without feeling starved. Because the cut is gentle, hunger and energy stay manageable, so the plan bends around busy weeks and meals out instead of breaking. Steady is not the slow option here — it is the pace most likely to still be working months from now, long after a harsher cut would have stalled or rebounded.

The 550-calorie rule is the general shape; your eating target depends on your body. Enter your weight, height, age, gender and activity level and the Weight Loss Calculator — preset here to metric and the steady 0.5 kg-a-week pace — estimates your maintenance and subtracts the deficit to give your daily calorie target in kilocalories, with a safety check. These figures are general estimates for healthy adults, not medical advice.