Estimate Your Daily Calorie Needs
Find your daily calorie needs based on age, weight, height, and activity.
An estimated energy requirement is the amount of energy an adult of your age, sex, size and activity level would need in a day to hold their weight steady. It is a population average applied to one person, which is both its usefulness and its weakness.
The estimator below runs on Health Canada's own equations. Everything after it explains how far to trust what it gives you.
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This tool provides general health information and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Energy estimates are population averages rather than personal targets. If food or weight has become a source of distress, a registered dietitian or your doctor is the right place to start. Speak with a qualified healthcare professional about your own circumstances. Call 911 or attend your nearest emergency department for any medical emergency.
Getting a Useful Estimate
Four of the five inputs are facts about your body. The fifth is a judgement call, and it is the one that moves the result most.
- Enter your age and sex, since the equations differ for each.
- Enter your height and weight in whichever units you think in.
- Choose an activity level honestly rather than optimistically.
- Read the figure as a starting estimate rather than a daily target.
- Check it against two weeks of real life before you rely on it.
Most people place themselves a category too high. If you sit down for work and exercise three times a week, you are low active rather than active.
Why Canada Stopped Counting Servings
In 2019 Health Canada rebuilt the Food Guide and removed something Canadians had used for decades. The serving counts went, the rainbow went, and a photograph of a plate replaced them: half vegetables and fruit, a quarter whole grains, a quarter protein, with no numbers attached to any of it.
The reasoning was blunt. Counting servings had not made Canadians healthier, people do not eat in servings anyway, and the mental arithmetic mostly produced guilt. Proportions are something you can see on a plate in front of you, which is rather the point.
Energy requirements did not vanish along with the servings, though. Health Canada still publishes equations to estimate energy requirement as part of the Dietary Reference Intakes, with a separate equation for adults at each of four activity levels. This estimator uses them. So the number is real, and Health Canada would still rather you did not organize your eating around it. Both things are true at once.
What the Number Means
Health Canada defines the figure as the average daily energy intake predicted to keep a healthy adult in energy balance, given their age, sex, weight, height and activity level. Two words in that definition matter more than the rest. Average, because it describes a population rather than you. Predicted, because it is a model rather than a measurement.
| Activity level | What it usually looks like |
|---|---|
| Inactive | Daily living only, with no deliberate exercise |
| Low active | Desk work plus light activity most days, or a short daily walk |
| Active | Regular exercise most days, or a job on your feet |
| Very active | Heavy physical work, or training most days |
Health Canada also publishes ranges for where that energy should come from. For adults 19 and over, the acceptable macronutrient distribution ranges run from 45 to 65 percent of energy as carbohydrate, 10 to 35 percent as protein and 20 to 35 percent as fat. They are wide on purpose, because a great many eating patterns fit inside them.
Words You Will Hear
Estimated energy requirement. The Canadian term for your daily energy estimate, usually shortened to EER.
Energy balance. Energy coming in matching energy going out, which is the state where weight holds steady.
Basal metabolic rate. What your body uses at complete rest simply keeping you alive, which for most people is the bulk of the daily total.
Macronutrients. Carbohydrate, protein and fat, the three sources of energy in food.
Calorie. Strictly a kilocalorie, though Canadian food labels use Calories with a capital C for the same unit.
When the Estimate Gets It Wrong
Every equation of this kind carries the same limits, and knowing them keeps you from trusting the figure further than it deserves.
- It does not account for body composition, so two people of identical height and weight can burn noticeably different amounts.
- You report your own activity level, and people routinely overestimate it.
- Metabolism varies between individuals even once age, sex and size are accounted for.
- Illness, medication, pregnancy and breastfeeding all change what your body needs.
- These equations do not cover athletes in heavy training.
- Children and teenagers need age-specific equations rather than the adult ones.
Health Canada makes the practical point itself, and it is worth remembering whenever a calculator and your body disagree. The most reliable indicator of whether your intake matches your needs is not a calculation at all. It is what your weight does over time.
If Counting Does Not Suit You
Calorie counting helps some people and harms others. If tracking numbers has ever tipped into something that felt compulsive, this page is not the right tool for you, and a dietitian is a far better place to start.
Several provinces offer that advice free, and almost nobody knows it. British Columbia staffs registered dietitians on its 8-1-1 line at no cost and with no referral, and Ontario connects callers to one through Health811 without asking for an OHIP number. Private dietitians charge a fee that provincial plans rarely cover and extended health benefits often do, so check your workplace plan first.
Common questions
Is This the Same Formula American Calculators Use?
The equations differ, though the results land in a similar range. Many American tools use Mifflin-St Jeor or Harris-Benedict, while this one uses the Dietary Reference Intake equations Health Canada publishes, which makes the reference standard Canadian.
Why Does Activity Level Change the Number So Much?
Because Health Canada uses a separate equation for each activity category rather than applying a multiplier, so moving between categories changes the coefficients themselves. That is also why an honest answer matters more than a flattering one.
Should You Eat Exactly This Many Calories?
Treat it as a starting estimate and let two weeks of ordinary life correct it. Appetite, sleep, stress and activity all move your daily needs around, and no equation tracks any of that.
Does Canada's Food Guide Give Calorie Targets?
It does not, and that is deliberate. The 2019 guide works in plate proportions rather than numbers, while Health Canada publishes the energy equations separately, for planning and research rather than as daily advice to the public.
What If Your Weight Is Not Moving the Way the Number Suggests?
Trust your weight over the equation. Health Canada treats weight change as the better indicator of whether intake matches need, so if two steady weeks contradict the estimate, the estimate is what is wrong.
Where Is the Official Canadian Guidance?
Health Canada publishes the full Dietary Reference Intakes tables, including the energy equations and the macronutrient values used on this page.
If you would rather talk this through with someone, you can book an appointment with a dietitian or find a family practice taking new patients.