You might have asked yourself how many calories should I eat a day to reach a certain weight loss goal.

It should be obvious that this cannot be answered in general because it depends on many factors.

*) Your weight loss goal. How much weight do you desire to lose in what amount of time?

*) How many calories per day are you burning right now with your current lifestyle.

Clearly, you will not lose weight nor gain any weight if you burn as many calories every day as you take in.

How many calories should I eat a day as a first and easy rule: Burning 3500 calories means you will burn one pound of body fat.

A realistic and good goal for long term weight loss is if you shoot for losing 1 to 2 pounds per week.

You might wonder why only losing 1 or 2 pounds per week and not more?

Because there are studies which indicated that overdoing it with rapid weight loss in a too short time might actually burn muscle tissue instead of fat. Going at a slow, but steady pace of losing between 1 and 2 pounds in a week ensures you will only burn fat and not muscles.

This is far better for good results down the road than overdoing it with the calorie burning.

Now all we need to do is calculate and you can actually find out how many calories should I eat a day if we want to lose one to two pounds in a week:

This means we want to burn 3500 – 7000 calories within 7 days which is approximately 500 or 1000 calories every day.

Here on our site is a Calorie Calculator which should help!

You enter your information like age, height etc. as well as your desired weight loss goal, eg. 2 pounds/7 days.

The Calorie Calculator will then give you an estimate of how many calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight, and also how many calories you need to intake per day to lose the desired weight.

Of course, the numbers given are estimates, but it can help you with your weight loss goals.

It should also be clear to know How many calories should I eat a day? and to use the calculator you need to know exactly how much you are taking in with your current foods.

It is, therefore, a good idea to make a plan and write down the calories of the foods you are eating every day, as well as a list of exercises you are doing so you know exactly how much calories you are burning.

Some caution is adviced

As so often when it comes to fast weight loss and burning of calories, caution is also advised. It is medically proven that women should not take in less than 1200 calories a day while men need to consume at least 1800 calories a day.

Instead of starving yourself into serious health risks, rather eat more calories a day but then do more exercises to burn off the calories.

You might wonder how many calories should I eat a day but this also means to be careful.