Guide · Body
There is no clever part. There is an estimate, a deficit, a protein floor, and a tracking method that survives the weeks when the scale refuses to move.
Educational only — not medical or nutritional advice. Talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before changing how you eat or train, especially if you have any medical condition, take any medication, are pregnant, or have any history of disordered eating. Nothing here is a recommendation for you specifically, none of the numbers are targets you should adopt, and general population arithmetic does not account for individual medical circumstances.
Maintenance is the intake at which weight is stable. Every formula for it is an estimate, and estimates are wrong for individuals — so use one to start, then correct it with real data.
Rough start: maintenance ≈ bodyweight (lb) × activity multiplier Then: eat that for 10–14 days, track weight daily, and adjust based on the trend, not the formula| Activity level | What it means in practice | Common multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | Desk work, little deliberate movement, under 5,000 steps | 13–14 |
| Lightly active | Some walking, 1–2 training sessions a week | 14–15 |
| Moderately active | 3–4 training sessions a week, on your feet some of the day | 15–16 |
| Very active | 5–6 hard sessions a week, or physical work | 16–18 |
| Athlete or manual labour | Two-a-days, or a genuinely physical job all day | 18–20 |
These multipliers are population averages published in general fitness literature, and individuals scatter widely around them. Two people of the same weight and stated activity level can differ by several hundred calories a day. Your own two-week trend beats any calculator. The formula gets you into the right neighbourhood; the data closes the gap.
Illustrative numbers throughout, chosen to look like real data rather than to describe anyone. A person starting at roughly 232 lb, self-assessing as moderately active, uses a multiplier of 15 and gets an estimate of 232 × 15 = 3,480 calories. They eat approximately there for two weeks and weigh every morning.
| Day | Week 1 weight | Week 1 intake | Week 2 weight | Week 2 intake |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | 232.4 | 3,410 | 232.0 | 3,380 |
| Tue | 231.6 | 3,455 | 231.5 | 3,420 |
| Wed | 232.8 | 3,390 | 232.3 | 3,505 |
| Thu | 233.1 | 3,600 | 231.8 | 3,340 |
| Fri | 232.2 | 3,290 | 231.2 | 3,410 |
| Sat | 231.9 | 3,720 | 231.6 | 3,690 |
| Sun | 232.6 | 3,180 | 230.9 | 3,190 |
| Average | 232.4 | 3,435 | 231.6 | 3,419 |
Two things worth noticing. Individual days are useless — Thursday of week 1 is heavier than Monday despite a genuine deficit, and Saturday's intake is 500 above Sunday's in both weeks, which is normal human behaviour, not a failure. Only the averages carry information. And the correction went upward: the person was eating more than they thought maintenance was, and still losing. Guessing low is the more common direction and it is why people conclude their metabolism is broken when their estimate was simply wrong.
A pound of body fat is commonly approximated at around 3,500 calories, which makes a 500-per-day deficit roughly a pound a week. It is an approximation — adaptive changes and water shifts blur it — but it is a workable planning number. The table below runs the time arithmetic for an illustrative 32-pound goal, from 232 down to 200.
| Daily deficit | Rough weekly loss | Weeks to lose 32 lb | Elapsed time | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | ≈ 0.5 lb | 64 | about 15 months | Easy to sustain, slow enough to feel like nothing is happening |
| 500 | ≈ 1 lb | 32 | about 7.5 months | The usual recommendation — meaningful and liveable |
| 750 | ≈ 1.5 lb | 21 | about 5 months | Faster; hunger and training quality both start to bite |
| 1,000 | ≈ 2 lb | 16 | about 3.7 months | Aggressive. Adherence and lean mass both suffer |
| Aggressive crash | varies | unpredictable | shorter, then reversed | Higher muscle loss, poor adherence, near-universal rebound |
The honest reading of that table is not that the top row is best. It is that every row eventually arrives, and only some rows are still being followed in month four. The 250-a-day row takes fifteen months and a great many people would actually complete it; the 1,000-a-day row takes under four months and a great many people abandon it in six weeks and end up further back than they started.
The deficit you actually follow beats the optimal one you abandon in three weeks. That is the entire lesson and most people learn it the slow way, twice.
In a deficit the body will take some of the weight from lean mass. Adequate protein plus resistance training is what shifts the balance toward fat. Common practical guidance in general fitness literature is roughly 0.7 to 1.0 g per pound of target bodyweight, which is generous but simple to hit and hard to overshoot in a deficit.
| Target bodyweight | 0.7 g/lb | 1.0 g/lb | Calories from protein at 1.0 g/lb | Share of a 2,400 cal day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 150 lb | 105 g | 150 g | 600 cal | 25% |
| 170 lb | 119 g | 170 g | 680 cal | 28% |
| 190 lb | 133 g | 190 g | 760 cal | 32% |
| 200 lb | 140 g | 200 g | 800 cal | 33% |
| 220 lb | 154 g | 220 g | 880 cal | 37% |
Protein contains roughly 4 calories per gram, which is where those figures come from. Note what the last column implies: at a smaller calorie target, the upper end of the range starts consuming a large share of the day, which is the practical reason many people sit nearer 0.7 than 1.0. Both ends of the range are widely used.
Protein also has the highest satiety per calorie of the three macros, so the floor makes the deficit easier to live with. Fill the remaining calories with carbohydrate and fat in whatever split you personally adhere to best — that ratio matters far less than the total and the protein floor.
Daily weight moves with water, glycogen, sodium, digestion, hormonal cycles, and sleep — swings of several pounds that have nothing to do with fat. It is entirely normal for the scale to stall for ten days and then drop three pounds overnight while the underlying loss was perfectly steady.
Here is that stall, worked. Illustrative four-week data for someone in a genuine and unchanged deficit:
| Week | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 232.0 | 231.5 | 232.3 | 231.8 | 231.2 | 231.6 | 230.9 | 231.6 |
| 2 | 230.7 | 230.4 | 231.2 | 231.0 | 230.6 | 231.5 | 231.0 | 230.9 |
| 3 | 230.2 | 229.8 | 232.4 | 232.0 | 231.1 | 230.4 | 230.4 | 230.9 |
| 4 | 229.8 | 229.2 | 229.6 | 229.1 | 229.4 | 229.7 | 228.9 | 229.4 |
Someone comparing Tuesday of week 3 to Wednesday of week 3 concludes they gained 2.6 pounds overnight, which would require eating roughly 9,000 surplus calories in a day. Someone comparing weekly averages sees a steady 0.73 pounds a week. Same data, two completely different emotional experiences, and only one of them is measuring anything.
The general problem here — a noisy daily series where only the trend carries information — comes up in a lot of places, and there is a longer treatment of separating signal from noise in the weight-tracking guide.
Two terms get used loosely and mean different things. A refeed is a short planned increase, usually in carbohydrate, typically for a day or two. A diet break is a longer return to approximately maintenance, usually one to two weeks.
| Refeed | Diet break | |
|---|---|---|
| Duration | 1–2 days | 1–2 weeks |
| Intake | Around maintenance, extra carbohydrate | Around maintenance |
| Typical spacing discussed in the literature | Weekly or fortnightly | Every 6–12 weeks of dieting |
| Reported reasons people use them | Training quality, psychological relief, glycogen replenishment | Adherence, hunger management, a break from tracking |
| Scale effect | Weight rises for several days on water and glycogen | Weight rises, then returns; the trend line pauses |
| What the evidence supports | Mixed and individual; not established as required for fat loss | Mixed; some evidence for adherence benefit, less for metabolic benefit |
The neutral summary is that neither is mandatory, both are common, and the honest reason most people use them is adherence rather than physiology. The scale rise afterwards is water and gut content and resolves within days — which is exactly the effect the weekly-average method above exists to see through. Whether either is appropriate for you is a question for a doctor or registered dietitian, not for a guide.
| Measure | How often | What it tells you | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bodyweight | Daily, averaged weekly | The trend, once averaged. Nothing at all on a single day | Track. It is the primary signal |
| Food intake | Every day for the first 2 weeks, then loosely | Whether the deficit is real; where the untracked calories are | Track hard early, then let it relax as portions become known |
| Protein grams | Daily | Whether the one macro that matters is being hit | Track. Treat it as a floor, not a target |
| Training log | Every session | Strength holding steady is the best cheap evidence the loss is mostly fat | Track. It is the closest thing to a body-composition measure you own |
| Photos | Monthly, same light, same pose | What the scale structurally cannot show | Track. Frequently the only visible progress during a stall |
| Waist measurement | Weekly, same conditions | A second trend line that is less water-sensitive than weight | Optional and useful |
| Smart-scale body fat percentage | — | Very little. Bioimpedance readings move with hydration | Ignore the absolute number. At most watch its direction over months |
| Any single day's weight | — | Water, sodium, glycogen, digestion, sleep | Ignore entirely. This is the single biggest source of unnecessary misery |
Sixty pounds took a long time, and most of that time was unremarkable. The weeks that felt like failure were mostly water. The thing that made it work was not discipline in any heroic sense — it was reducing the number of decisions: same breakfast, known portions, one number to check per week.
That is the adherence side, and it is the part the arithmetic cannot reach. The deficit is a number; following it for eight months is a system. What tends to help, described generally and without any claim that it will work for you: fewer decisions, because willpower spent choosing lunch is not available later. Default meals, so that the tracked, known option is also the easy one. Environment over intention, because what is in the kitchen matters more than what was resolved on Sunday. And a defined recovery rule — one day off plan is a day, not a failed project, and the people who finish are the ones who resume the next morning rather than restarting the following January.
Also worth saying plainly: none of this should be pursued at any cost. Rapid loss, obsessive tracking, and treating a single day's weight as a verdict are all associated with genuine harm, and if tracking is making your relationship with food worse rather than better, stopping the tracking is a legitimate and often correct decision. That is a conversation for a doctor or registered dietitian.
I built Cut for that shape of tracking: weight in, trend out, no account, no server, nothing leaves your device. The habit layer underneath it is Fire, and the rest of the offline, local-only tools are on the apps page.
FAQ
Start with a rough estimate of bodyweight in pounds multiplied by an activity multiplier of roughly 13 to 18, eat at that level for 10 to 14 days while weighing daily, then adjust based on the actual weight trend. Your own two-week data is more accurate than any formula, which only needs to get you into the right neighbourhood. This is general information, not medical advice.
Compare the average weight of week two against week one, convert the change to calories using the roughly 3,500-per-pound approximation, and divide by seven. If you lost 0.8 lb while averaging 3,427 calories a day, that implies about 400 calories a day of deficit, so actual maintenance is roughly 3,827. Formulas commonly land several hundred calories away in either direction.
A deficit of about 500 calories a day corresponds to roughly a pound a week using the common 3,500-calories-per-pound approximation, and is the usual recommendation. Larger deficits lose weight faster but cost adherence, training quality, and more lean mass. The deficit you actually sustain beats the theoretically optimal one you abandon.
Common practical guidance is roughly 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of target bodyweight. Adequate protein combined with resistance training shifts the composition of the loss toward fat rather than lean mass, and protein is also the most satiating macronutrient per calorie. At a 200 lb target that is 140 to 200 grams, or 560 to 800 calories.
Daily weight is dominated by water, glycogen, sodium, digestion, and sleep, which can mask steady fat loss for a week or more. Compare weekly averages to previous weekly averages rather than individual days, and only conclude the deficit is not working if the four-week trend is flat. A 2.6 lb overnight jump would require roughly 9,000 surplus calories, which is why it is almost always water.
A refeed is a planned one or two day increase toward maintenance, usually with extra carbohydrate. A diet break is a longer return to approximately maintenance for one to two weeks. Neither is required for fat loss, both are commonly used mainly for adherence, and the weight rise afterwards is water and gut content rather than fat. Discuss whether either suits you with a doctor or registered dietitian.
Far less than total calories and the protein floor. Once calories and protein are set, split the remainder between carbohydrate and fat in whichever way you personally adhere to best.
Speed is the wrong target. At a sustainable pace of roughly a pound a week, a 60-pound loss is a project measured in many months, and the approaches that go faster tend to cost more lean mass and have far higher rebound rates. This is general information, not medical advice, and anyone with a medical condition or a history of disordered eating should speak to a doctor or registered dietitian first.