We recently received a great question from Anton:
"What are my maintenance calories and how often should I rest?"
It's a simple question with a slightly less simple answer.
So what do we know? We know Anton is male, but that's about it. We don't know his age, height or weight. We don't know whether he trains twice a week or six times. We don't know if he likes the show Breaking Bad and if he did, would we be best friends forever? Anton could spend his working day sitting behind a desk or walking 15,000 steps. He could be training for strength, running, playing sport or doing a combination of everything.
All of those things matter.
So rather than guessing a number for Anton, let's look at how we can help you all estimate your own maintenance calories, how recovery fits into the picture and why it's important that these things don't become an obsession.
First, What Are Maintenance Calories?
Your maintenance calories are approximately how much energy you need to consume to maintain your current body weight over time.
Importantly just so you know, this isn't a blog about weight-loss.
Fitness has become a bit of a show and there's a tendency within fitness culture to assume everyone must always be trying to lose weight, gain weight or dramatically change their body composition. Sometimes maintaining where you are while getting stronger, moving well, improving your fitness and enjoying your training is a perfectly good goal.
Firstly lets discuss BMR. Your body uses energy simply to keep you alive. Breathing, circulating blood, maintaining body temperature and keeping your organs functioning all require energy before you've taken a single step.
This is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).
Then there's everything else you do. Walking to the shops. Training. Taking the stairs. Playing with the kids. Working on your feet. Doing the gardening. Even digesting your food requires energy.
Put everything together and we arrive at your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).
Your maintenance calories are essentially an estimate of the energy required to match that expenditure.
So... How Do You Calculate Maintenance Calories?
There are several equations used to estimate energy requirements. One commonly used starting point is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which estimates BMR using your age, sex, height and weight.
From there, an activity multiplier can be applied to provide an estimate of total daily energy expenditure.
The important word here is estimate.
A calculator doesn't know how hard you trained yesterday. It doesn't know that your job has suddenly become more physical or that you've spent the weekend digging up the backyard. It certainly doesn't know exactly how your individual body will respond.
Think of the calculation as somewhere to begin rather than a number you must hit perfectly every day.
Example One: Three Days In The Gym
Let's meet our completely fictional 35-year-old male.
He's 182cm tall, weighs 84kg and trains three times per week. His current lifting split looks like:
- One leg session
- One chest session
- One back session
Using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, his estimated BMR is around 1,800 calories per day.
Once his normal activity and three weekly training sessions are considered, a reasonable starting estimate for his maintenance intake might be somewhere around 2,500–2,800 calories per day, depending on how active the rest of his life is.
That last part matters.
If he works behind a desk and drives to work, his requirements could look quite different from someone of exactly the same age, height and weight who works in a warehouse and spends most of the day on their feet.
Example Two: Pilates, Strength And A Long Walk
Our second example is a 29-year-old female who is 174cm tall and weighs 69kg.
Her typical week includes:
- Two Pilates sessions
- One strength session
- One long walk with friends
Her estimated BMR is approximately 1,480 calories per day.
Once we account for her usual activity, her maintenance calories could initially land somewhere around 2,000–2,300 calories per day.
Again, it's a starting point.
The long walk matters. Her occupation matters. How much she moves throughout the rest of the week matters. Two people can follow exactly the same exercise program and still have different energy requirements.
Don't Forget The Movement That Isn't "Exercise"
This is where calorie calculators can sometimes distract us from the bigger picture.
Formal exercise is only part of your daily movement.
Walking around at work, cleaning the house, taking the stairs, walking the dog and generally being an active human all contribute to your daily energy expenditure. This is often referred to as Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT.
Someone training five hours per week but otherwise sitting for most of the day may actually accumulate less total movement than someone training three hours per week who walks everywhere and has a physical job.
That's why answering "I train three times a week" still doesn't give us the complete picture.
So How Do I Know If My Estimate Is Right?
This is where we'd encourage you to zoom out.
You don't need to become obsessed with weighing yourself every morning, tracking every gram of food or watching numbers move up and down.
Start with an estimate and pay attention to trends over time.
Is your body weight relatively stable? How are your energy levels? Are you recovering from training? Are you sleeping well? Is your performance in the gym holding steady or improving? Are you generally feeling good?
Your maintenance intake doesn't need to be perfect down to the last calorie.
In fact, your actual energy expenditure changes from day to day. You might move more on Saturday than Wednesday. Your Tuesday workout might be considerably harder than your Thursday session.
Maintenance is better thought of as a range and a longer-term balance rather than one magical number.
And How Often Should I Rest?
The second half of Anton's question has just as much nuance. There's no rule saying everyone needs exactly two rest days per week. Your recovery needs depend on what you're doing.
Three heavy full-body strength sessions create different demands from two Pilates classes and a strength session. Preparing for a marathon is different again. Your training history, sleep, nutrition, work and general life stress all contribute.
There's also an important distinction between resting a muscle group and taking a complete rest day.
If you train legs on Monday, you don't necessarily need to spend Tuesday on the couch. You might train your upper body, go for a walk or simply continue with your normal daily activities while your legs recover.
Likewise, a lighter Pilates session, mobility work or an easy walk can sit comfortably between more demanding training sessions for many people.
What About Our Three-Day Lifter?
Let's go back to our 35-year-old training legs, chest and back.
His week might look something like this:
Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Rest or normal daily movement
Wednesday: Chest
Thursday: Rest or light activity
Friday: Back
Saturday: Recreational activity
Sunday: Rest
Does it have to look exactly like that? Absolutely not. He could train Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Or Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The important consideration is whether he's recovering sufficiently to perform his next session effectively.
The training plan needs to work with the person rather than forcing the person to work around the training plan.
How Do I Know If I Need More Recovery?
Your body is pretty good at providing feedback if you're prepared to listen to it.
Some things worth paying attention to include:
- Soreness that regularly carries into your next training session
- A sustained drop in training performance
- Feeling unusually fatigued during workouts
- Difficulty completing loads or repetitions you normally manage
- Poor or disrupted sleep
- A noticeable lack of enthusiasm for training
- General fatigue that doesn't seem to disappear
One bad session isn't necessarily a sign that you need to overhaul your program.
Everyone has flat days.
Instead, look for patterns.
If performance has been declining for several sessions and you're constantly sore, tired and struggling to recover, adding more training probably isn't the solution.
Recovery Doesn't Start When You Leave The Gym
Rest days are only one part of recovery.
Sleep matters. Nutrition matters. Hydration matters. Your workload matters. The amount of training you're doing matters.
And this is where Anton's two questions actually start to overlap.
If you're consistently eating considerably less energy than your body requires, recovery can become more challenging. Likewise, even a well-designed training program can become difficult to recover from when you're regularly getting inadequate sleep.
Training doesn't happen in isolation from the other 23 hours of your day.
A sensible program considers the whole person.
Calculate. Test. Adjust.
There's a reason we haven't given Anton one definitive calorie target or told him exactly how many days he needs to rest.
We don't know enough about Anton yet. Even if we had his age, height, weight and complete training schedule, we'd still be starting with an estimate. And that's okay.
Calculate a reasonable starting point. Follow your training program. Eat well. Sleep. Move. Pay attention to how you're performing and how you're feeling.
Then adjust when necessary. We need you to know that yyour wellness pursuits don't have to become an endless pursuit of smaller body-fat percentages, perfect calorie targets or numbers on a scale. Sometimes the goal can simply be to maintain, train consistently, recover well and keep building a better body.
