Free tool
Calorie Deficit Calculator
Choose a pace, and see the daily calories to eat, and the date you'll reach your goal weight.
A plan is easy. Staying in the deficit is the job.
Coachero tracks calories against this target every day and reads your real weight trend, so it knows if the deficit is actually working, and nudges the number when your body adapts. Free to start, in your browser.
Run your deficit in CoacheroWhat is a calorie deficit?
A calorie deficit means eating fewer calories than you burn. When you do, your body makes up the shortfall from stored energy, mostly body fat, and you lose weight. It's the one mechanism behind every diet: not the specific foods, but the sustained gap between calories in and calories out.
How this calculator works
Roughly 3,500 calories equals a pound of fat (about 7,700 per kilogram). So a 500-calorie daily deficit is about a pound a week. You give it your maintenance calories (TDEE) and pick a pace; it subtracts the matching deficit to get your daily calorie target, then divides the weight you want to lose by the pace to project a finish date.
Picking a sensible pace
Faster isn't better. A pace of about 0.5–1% of bodyweight per week loses fat while protecting muscle, training performance and your sanity. Push much harder and you tend to lose more muscle, feel worse, and rebound. If the tool warns your target is very low, ease the pace: a slower deficit you can actually hold beats an aggressive one you quit. And real loss isn't linear: water and glycogen make the scale jump around, so judge progress by the multi-week trend, not any single morning.
Deficit questions
How many calories to lose 1 lb a week?
About a 500-calorie daily deficit, or 3,500 calories over the week, which is roughly a pound of fat. For 0.5 kg a week, aim for about a 550-calorie daily deficit.
Why has the scale stopped moving?
Usually water retention masking real fat loss, a maintenance number that's drifted as you got lighter, or intake creeping up. The fix is to trust the multi-week trend and recheck your maintenance: a smaller body burns fewer calories, so the deficit needs revisiting over time.
Should I eat back exercise calories?
If your TDEE already includes your usual activity, no: you'd erase the deficit. Only add food back for genuinely unusual, big efforts, and even then conservatively, since burn estimates run high.
Estimates for general fitness use, not medical or dietary advice. Very low-calorie diets should only be done under medical supervision.