How Many Calories to Lose 1 Pound a Week

A pound of body fat stores about 3,500 calories, so to lose one pound in a week you need a weekly deficit of 3,500 — which is 500 a day. The calories you actually eat are your maintenance minus that 500: maintain at 2,000 and you aim for 1,500, maintain at 2,400 and you aim for 1,900. The deficit is fixed at 500; the plate changes because your maintenance changes. The embedded calculator uses metric under the hood, so its steady preset is 0.5 kg a week — about 1.1 lb — and it shows a slightly larger deficit near 550 calories a day; the extra fifty is just because half a kilo is a little more than a pound. To break the deficit down into food terms, the Calorie Deficit Calculator does exactly that.

A pound a week sits in the middle of the safe 0.5–2 lb range, which is why most guidance treats it as the sensible default: it is fast enough to see progress yet gentle enough to protect muscle and stay sustainable. Note what this page answers — the calories you eat to lose a pound a week, not the size of the deficit itself. Those are two sides of the same sum, and if it is the deficit you want to size or tune, the Calorie Deficit Calculator is built for that. Everything here reads off your maintenance, which the TDEE Calculator estimates if you would like to confirm it.

A 500-calorie deficit feels modest day to day, and that is the point — it adds up quietly. A pound a week is roughly 50 pounds over a year of consistency, all from a gap most people can hold without feeling deprived. Because the cut is small, hunger and energy stay manageable and the plan survives real life: meals out, busy weeks, the occasional day off. Slow and steady is not a consolation prize here; it is the pace most likely to still be working a year from now, when faster starts have long since stalled.

The 500-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 the steady, roughly one-pound-a-week pace — estimates your maintenance and subtracts the deficit to give your daily calorie target, with a safety check. These figures are general estimates for healthy adults, not medical advice.