--- title: Forget Counting Calories: Here's How Many Calories You Should Eat description: A new government calorie calculator, the Body Weight Planner, uses the latest research to personalize your weight loss plan and calories canonical: https://time.com/3964686/calories-calorie-tracker-weight-loss/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-20T17:23:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T09:24:07.458Z article:section: Health og:title: Here's How Many Calories You Should Eat To Lose Weight og:description: A new government calorie calculator, the Body Weight Planner, uses the latest research to personalize your weight loss plan and calories og:url: https://time.com/3964686/calories-calorie-tracker-weight-loss/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb49f671ce7202f62/6987789cf887dc6582e895ff/health-weight-exercise-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2507 og:image:height: 1410 og:image:alt: TIME.com stock photos Weight Loss Health Exercise Weights og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's How Many Calories You Should Eat To Lose Weight twitter:description: A new government calorie calculator, the Body Weight Planner, uses the latest research to personalize your weight loss plan and calories twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb49f671ce7202f62/6987789cf887dc6582e895ff/health-weight-exercise-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Find Out How Many Calories to Cut For Weight Loss > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jul 20, 2015 5:23 PM UTC  Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jul 20, 2015 5:23 PM UTC Forget the number 2,000—a new government calculator uses the latest research to spit out an exact calorie count and exercise regimen you’ll need to hit your weight loss goals. The calculator, called the [Body Weight Planner](https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/index.html), is now available online for public use, but the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has used it in research since 2011\. “We originally intended the Body Weight Planner as a research tool, but so many people wanted to use it for their own weight management that we knew we needed to adapt it with more information about how to achieve a healthy lifestyle,” said Kevin Hall, PhD, one of the creators of the tool and a senior investigator at the NIH, in a press release. **Read more** [The Best Way To Make Your Exercise Habit Stick](http://time.com/3950220/exercise-healthy-habits/?iid=time%5Fspeed) The calculator asks your weight, sex, age and height—standard measures often used to prescribe a calorie plan. But it also incorporates more recent research about exercise to further personalize your plan, asking you to estimate your physical activity level on a scale of 1.4 (sedentary) to 2.5 (very active), to name your goal weight and to pick a date by which you want to reach it. Most of us get about that far in thinking through a weight loss plan, but the calculator doesn’t stop there. It also asks you to name a percentage by which you plan to increase your physical activity and tells you what kind of exercise, how much, how often and what intensity level it’ll take to get there. Adding in a routine of light running isn’t the same as starting intense swimming, and in a distinctive feature, the calculator doesn’t weigh all physical activity equally. The resulting calculations tell you three things: the daily number of calories you’ll need to eat to maintain your current weight, the calories you’ll need to reach your goal in your specified time, and the calories you’ll need to maintain your goal once you’ve met it. You can then use [SuperTracker](https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/), a meal-planning tool developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to devise a meal plan based on your calorie stats. = For people motivated by microscopic proofs of progress, there’s even an expert version of the calorie calculator that breaks down your goal by day, so you can see exactly how your weight loss will likely progress—decimal by decimal—if you stick to your program. _Read next:_ [_Here’s The Amount Of Exercise That Lowers Breast Cancer Risk_](http://time.com/3960035/exercise-breast-cancer/?iid=time%5Freadnext) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3964686/calories-calorie-tracker-weight-loss/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3964686/calories-calorie-tracker-weight-loss/"},"headline":"Find Out How Many Calories to Cut For Weight Loss","datePublished":"2015-07-20T17:23:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T09:24:07.458Z","description":"A new NIH calculator gives you a personalized plan in minutes","url":"https://time.com/3964686/calories-calorie-tracker-weight-loss/","keywords":["Exercise & Fitness","diet","fitness","calories","Exercise","Diet & Nutrition","Healthy Eating","calorie"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb49f671ce7202f62/6987789cf887dc6582e895ff/health-weight-exercise-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb49f671ce7202f62/6987789cf887dc6582e895ff/health-weight-exercise-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TIME.com stock photos Weight Loss Health Exercise Weights","caption":"TIME.com stock photos Weight Loss Health Exercise Weights","creditText":"Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/exercisefitness/","name":"Exercise & Fitness"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3964686/calories-calorie-tracker-weight-loss/","name":"Find Out How Many Calories to Cut For Weight Loss"}}]}] ```