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How many calories should I consume daily to lose weight?

By Eloísa Carmona - 2021-10-27T14:50:35Z

Daily calorie intake must be balanced with energy expenditure, and on average, a moderately active woman aged 26 to 50 needs to eat approximately 2000 calories per day to maintain her weight and about 1500 per day to lose around half a kilogram per week.

However, everyone’s body and metabolism are different and to know exactly how many calories to consume daily to lose weight, one must consider specific factors such as age, height, weight, physical activity, and even sex, and there are already calculators available that help you estimate the calories you need to maintain your weight, such as the one from the Mexican Social Security Institute.

How to know how many calories to consume daily to lose weight?

Considering the factors mentioned before, women who are active and walk around 5 kilometers a day will need to consume 2200 calories or more daily to maintain their weight and at least 1700 calories to lose 0.45 kg of weight per week.

But for young women in their 20s, the caloric needs are higher, while women over 50 generally require fewer calories. Lastly, these types of estimates do not apply to pregnant or breastfeeding women, as they have significantly higher caloric needs.

Although the idea that controlling calories is key to losing weight is very popular, nutrition experts today lean more towards understanding what you are consuming and from that, eating responsibly.

Of course, calories are important, but counting calories can be a burden at best, or a dangerous practice at worst, as it makes you focus on the numbers instead of enjoying the food and can be dangerous to pay attention to calorie counts to the point of obsession. This is the main reason why, for anyone with a history of eating disorders, calorie counting may be something to avoid.

Remember that wanting to lose weight involves much more than counting calories: it encompasses exercise, how you sleep, how stressed you are, and some health issues that you may not be able to control, such as hormonal changes.

Therefore, if losing weight is your goal, it's important to recognize that this is an individual process, in which you must discover how to do it in a healthy and appropriate way for you. Ensure that your goals are realistic for your body, as well as the amount of time and energy you have to dedicate to the process.

Beyond seeking to know how many calories you should consume daily to lose weight, spending a lot of time analyzing them may not be as useful as you expect, and here are some reasons why:

You don't know how many calories you need. To accurately count calories for weight loss, you would need to know your basal metabolic rate or how many calories your body burns each day just to stay alive and keep all its systems functioning; this study requires a very expensive and not-so-accessible piece of machinery.
You don't know how many calories your body absorbs from food. Not all calories are equal. Everything from how foods are processed to the amount of fiber they contain determines how many calories you will absorb from them. Additionally, even gut bacteria can influence how you digest foods and how many calories you get from them.
The calorie count on packaging may not be accurate. The institutions responsible for this often allow a margin of error of up to 20 percent in the numbers on nutritional labels, which you likely rely on to count many of your calories.
Counting calories makes you ignore hunger signals. Focusing on calories can make you forget how you actually feel before eating: hungry, bored, stressed, anxious, and these hunger signals play an important role in maintaining a balanced diet.