How Many Calories Should I ‘Burn’ a Day? Is There a Perfect Number?

It's common to wonder how many calories you should burn in a day, especially when trying to become more fit or lose weight. However, every person is different, and individual factors such as activity level, body weight, height, and age affect daily calorie needs. To maintain a weight that supports overall health or reach a fitness goal, it can be helpful to understand how many calories you may burn per day. Learn more about daily energy needs, how calorie goals are calculated, and ways to potentially increase your daily calorie burn below.

Understanding the basics of calories and energy

A calorie is a unit of measurement for energy. Our bodies use heat energy, or calories, from everything we eat and drink to support all of our daily functions and metabolism. This includes breathing, talking, digesting, thinking, walking, and any additional forms of physical activity.

If you take in more energy (calories) than your body uses in a day, then you have a positive energy balance. Over time, your body stores the extra energy primarily as fat, which can lead to weight gain. If you consistently take in fewer calories than you need, you have a negative energy balance, which can lead to loss of body fat and weight over time. If you consume approximately the number of calories you need in a day, you are more likely to maintain your current weight.

Here’s what influences how many calories your body burns naturally:

How physical activity impacts your daily calorie burn

Exercise has many proposed health benefits, including the potential to help you maintain weight. On top of your resting and basal metabolic rate calorie needs, you can increase how many calories you burn in a day by incorporating regular exercise sessions and increasing physical activity throughout the day.

Different types of exercise have varying ‘calorie-burning’ effects. Aerobic exercise, commonly referred to as ‘cardio,’ may increase your heart rate and keep it elevated during your workout, which can help increase your energy expenditure. Aerobic exercise is consistently found to be beneficial for weight loss. Examples of cardio include running, bicycling, swimming, jumping rope, or playing sports like basketball.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a type of exercise that consists of short bursts of vigorous activity alternated with periods of rest or lower-intensity activities. An example of a HIIT workout is doing jumping jacks, burpees, or squats for 40 seconds, followed by a 20-second rest, then repeating. HIIT workouts have similar effects on weight loss to aerobic exercise.

Strength training may help build lean body mass, which may slightly contribute to an increase in the number of calories a person ‘burns’ at rest. However, it doesn't typically have as significant a ‘calorie-burning’ effect as cardio or HIIT workouts.

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy you use with general physical activity, rather than structured exercise sessions, and helps increase your ‘calorie burn’ throughout the day. Examples of NEAT are cleaning the house, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, dancing, or working a physically demanding job.

Estimating your personal daily calorie needs

The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans provide a general idea of how much energy adults need per day, taking into account age, sex, and activity level. The estimated daily calorie needs for an adult woman are between 1,600 and 2,400 calories, and between 2,000 and 3,000 calories for men. For an inactive person, calorie intake needs are likely on the lower end of the estimated range. Women in the second or third trimester of pregnancy or who are lactating need additional calories and should ask a healthcare provider for guidance.

While general calorie guidelines are helpful, the Mifflin-St. Jeor's equation is considered a preferable method to predict an individual's calorie needs. This equation takes into consideration the following factors:

Wearable fitness trackers, such as watches and bands, may also help estimate the number of calories you burn daily. While the estimates of total daily energy expenditure from wearable fitness trackers may not always be highly accurate, they can provide information on your calorie burn trends and encourage you to be more active. In my work as a registered dietitian, many of my clients have found fitness trackers helpful in ensuring they add enough activity to meet their daily exercise goals and thus stick to their ‘calorie-burning’ goal, whether from dedicated gym workouts, active household chores, or taking short walks throughout the day.

Setting realistic goals: burning calories for weight management

A calorie deficit, or consuming fewer calories than you burn and less than what your body needs to maintain its weight, is needed for weight loss. This can be achieved by burning calories through exercise, reducing the amount of calories you eat per day, or a combination of both.

A general rule of thumb is to aim for a 500-calorie daily calorie reduction to lose about one pound per week, although this may not be effective or appropriate for your individual needs. Keep in mind that the same calorie and exercise goals don't work for everyone, and plateaus often occur in a weight loss journey, so calorie goals may need to be adjusted over time. Since calorie needs are based in part on weight and body mass, calorie needs may decrease when weight loss occurs.

Although a calorie deficit should generally lead to weight loss, adaptive thermogenesis can make weight loss more challenging. In adaptive thermogenesis, calorie needs decrease more than predicted, beyond what would be expected from changes in fat and muscle mass during weight loss. However, the effects of adaptive thermogenesis may neutralize after weight is stable for a time or when a person eats the calories their body needs for maintenance for a while, so its role may be less significant than previously thought.

Tips to help you burn more calories effectively

We contacted Jesse Ramos, Jr., an ISSA Certified Health Coach and NASM Certified Personal Trainer at BBT Fitness, to ask his opinions on effective workouts. He recommends the following tips to burn calories:

Focus on large muscle groups and compound exercises. "Training legs is essential. The legs are the largest and most powerful muscle group in the body, and many people tend to undertrain them. Compound movements like squats, lunges, and deadlifts recruit multiple muscles at once," which helps increase calorie burn. He further recommends, "training large muscle groups and incorporating full-body compound exercises" because they can increase "EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), which means your body may use some additional energy even while at rest after a workout."

Increase your activity throughout the day. While he was working in banking, Ramos Jr. personally found it helpful to use "two-minute bodyweight circuits that you can do right in your office. I used to step away for a restroom break and knock out a quick set of squats, lunges, overhead reaches, and side-to-side rotations. These short bursts of movement, done three times a day, added up to over 30 minutes a week — and that’s an extra two hours of movement a month without even hitting the gym." He also suggests increasing NEAT "by adding ankle weights, hiking, cleaning, or just staying more active throughout the day. It’s about keeping your energy output high."

Focus on sleep. He recommends "blocking blue light, staying off your phone two hours before bed, and aiming for at least 6–7 hours of quality sleep," as sleep has many proposed benefits for recovery and overall health.

Work on your mindset. "Lastly, shifting your mindset to view this as a lifestyle, not a deadline, helps reduce stress and makes consistency easier."

Seeking guidance and professional advice

If you're not currently exercising regularly, check with your healthcare provider to ensure that starting a new exercise regimen is safe for you. For personalized nutrition and exercise advice, consider working with a registered dietitian and/or certified fitness trainer.

A registered dietitian can help you accurately estimate your calorie intake and needs, determine how many calories you need to burn each day, and create an appropriate and realistic diet tailored to your individual needs. A certified personal trainer can help provide personalized guidance on exercise form and the best routine for your body, current fitness level, and goals.

Final thoughts

While you can estimate your calorie-burning goal, the number of calories you need per day depends on many individual factors. For long-term wellness, focus on combining a sustainable level of physical activities you enjoy with a balanced, healthy diet.