How Many Calories to Lose 2 Pounds a Week

A pound of body fat stores about 3,500 calories, so two pounds is roughly 7,000. To lose that in a week you need a weekly deficit of 7,000 calories, which comes to about 1,000 a day. That single figure is where every “2 lb a week” plan starts. The calories you actually eat, though, are not 1,000 — they are your maintenance minus 1,000. Maintenance is the energy your body burns on a normal day, so a person who maintains at 2,400 calories would aim for about 1,400, and one who maintains at 2,800 would aim for about 1,800. There is no universal “2 lb” number because the deficit is fixed but your maintenance is not. The embedded calculator is preset to its fastest pace, which is 1 kg (about 2.2 lb) a week, so it shows a slightly larger deficit of around 1,100 calories a day — the extra hundred is simply because 1 kg is a touch more than 2 lb. To see how that deficit is built from what you eat, the Calorie Deficit Calculator breaks it into food terms.

Most guidance puts a safe pace between 0.5 and 2 lb a week, which makes 2 lb the top of that range rather than a middle-of-the-road target. It is realistic mainly at higher starting weights, where a 1,000-calorie deficit still leaves a comfortable amount to eat. The arithmetic has a floor: if your maintenance minus 1,000 lands below about 1,200 calories a day for women or 1,500 for men, the target has dropped under the level generally considered safe without medical supervision. When that happens the calculator flags it and suggests a gentler rate — that is pure arithmetic protecting you from an unsustainable plan, not a diagnosis. Your maintenance baseline is the number everything reads off, and the TDEE Calculator estimates it across three formulas if you want to confirm it.

If the scale drops more than 2 lb in the first week, that is expected and does not mean the plan is running ahead of the maths. The early loss is largely water and glycogen: as your body spends its glycogen stores it releases the water bound to them, and each gram of glycogen holds roughly three grams of water. Once those stores settle, weekly loss eases back toward the pace the calories set. The sensible reading is to judge progress over two to three weeks rather than a single weigh-in, so a fast start does not become a reason to expect the same drop every week — or a reason to cut calories further when the number inevitably slows.

The 1,000-calorie rule is the general shape; your own eating target depends on your body. Enter your weight, height, age, gender and activity level and the Weight Loss Calculator — preset here to the fastest pace, roughly 2 lb a week — estimates your maintenance with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation and subtracts the deficit to give your daily calorie target, along with a safety check. These figures are general estimates for healthy adults, not medical advice.