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This is a weight loss calculator for the ketogenic diet. It finds your optimal food intake for your personal weight loss goals. Click for more!

A ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate protein, low carbohydrate diet. It has a lot of health advantages compared to the standard western diet. Most people do keto because of the weight loss, but it also has other health advantages like lowering risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke, and much more.

James Hardiman has created a nice tutorial for this calculator, watch it here:

Your Fat Loss Calculation

To get your personal customized recommendations, please enter some data about yourself.

Female Male
kg weight ( lbs)
cm tall (' ")
Date of birth:

Determine Your Energy Expenditure

Given that data, it is possible to calculate your Base Metabolic Rate (BMR). This site uses the Mifflin-St.Jeor-Formula which was the most accurate in two studies.

  • kcal Base Metabolic Rate

The BMR resembles the resting metabolic rate. The real daily energy expenditure depends on how active you are on average. Based on that activity level we calculate your actual total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). This is the number of calories you need to consume each day when you do not want to lose weight.

  • Sedentary. Typical desk job, little to no exercise.
    Lightly active. Walking around a good amount, retail jobs. 1–3 hours per week of light exercise.
    Moderately active. 3–5 hours a week, e.g. daily 15 minutes biking and 3 times heavy lifting per week.
    Very active. Construction workers, hard exercise 6–7 days per week
    Custom: kcal
  • kcal daily energy expenditure

How Much Body Fat do you Have?

Let's find out your body fat percentage. Based on your height and weight, your body fat percentage might be around %. The most accurate measurement would be a DEXA. Skin fold measurement with a good caliper is also pretty accurate. The easiest way is to just estimate it from some comparison pictures. More: 1, 2, 3, 4. You can also try this calculator but that can be inaccurate.

  • % Body fat

With % body fat you have kg (lbs) of lean body mass, and kg (lbs) of body fat. This includes about kg (lbs) of essential body fat that you must not lose.

Learn Your Optimal Macronutrient Ratio

Macronutrients are nutrients that provide energy for your body.

How Many Carbs Can I Eat?

Below 50g of net carbs each day is enough for most people to stay in ketosis. Make sure to get your carbs from vegetables (10-15g), nuts and seeds (5-10g), and fruits (5-10g). Keep in mind that in Europe food labels generally show net carbs, while America shows total carbs. Calculate net carbs by subtracting fiber from total carbs.

Carbohydrate comes in two forms: net carbs and fiber. The body converts net carbs into glucose and raise your blood sugar, which we don't want on a ketogenic diet. Some should stay below 25g. The other part of carbs is fiber, which is good for you. Insoluble fiber passes through your body without raising blood sugar. Gut bacteria produces fatty acids from soluble fiber. These fatty acids provide a few calories but do not raise blood sugar.

  • g daily net carbs (changeable)

How Much Protein Should I Eat?

It is important to get enough protein to maintain your muscles, but not too much or it will kick you out of ketosis.

Based on your personal data, you should stay above g if you are mostly sedentary. You can go as high as g if you put your muscles under a lot of new stress or with a large caloric deficit. High protein prevents muscle loss.

When in doubt, choose the middle ground. For you, that's g.

When losing weight or under physical stress somewhat more protein than the RDA is ok. Consuming too much protein can be problematic: the body converts extra amino acids to glucose, driving down ketones and suppressing fat burning.

See Protein Intake While Dieting and the book The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance for details. The maximum protein level used here is based on the research paper "Dietary protein for athletes: From requirements to optimum adaptation" analyzed in "The Myth of 1 g/lb: Optimal Protein Intake for Bodybuilders". Even professional body builders should have no benefit in going above the upper limit used here. The values here are in g/lbs of lean body mass, while in the previous link they talk about g/lbs of total body weight. That's why the number here seems a bit higher.

  • no exercisechosen amountvery active
    g minimum g chosen g maximum
    g/kg g/kg g/kg
    g/lbs g/lbs g/lbs

How Much Fat Should I Eat?

Eat fat to your liking. You have chosen g of carbs and g protein. This means you have already kcal of your daily requirements covered. What's left for you to choose is how much fat to eat.

Here you can choose your caloric intake. Try a moderate deficit and only go lower if you feel comfortable after about a week.

Fat intake depends on your goal. If you want to lose weight, your total calories have to be below your maintenance calories of kcal. Think of fat as your healthy filler nutrient. To maintain your current weight, fill all the remaining calories up with g fat. Don't go below g of fat.

If you want to lose weight, your total calories have to eat less than kcal. How low can you go? This depends on the maximum rate your body can release body fat (See discussion 1 and 2). If you eat above g of fat, your body burns only fat and you will lose weight. If you eat below that, your body will start burning protein. This means your body cannot produce that many calories from fat only. You will start to lose your hard earned muscles. You don't want that.

Also, you should not go below 30g of daily fat to prevent the formation of gallstones. (See TAaSoLCL page 168).

  • lowest intakechosen intakemaintenance
    % deficit % deficit % deficit
    kcal min kcal chosen kcal max
    g fat min g fat chosen g fat max

Your Personal Results

Here are your personal macros:

kcal Daily Calorie Intake
g Carbs (%, kcal)
g Protein (%, kcal)
g Fat (%, kcal)

Here is a visual representation of your macros and your deficit. The area of the circles is exactly scaled based on your ratios.

Weight Maintenance
kcal
Your Target
kcal
Deficit
kcal

If you stick to g of carbs, g protein, and g fat, you will eat kcal and lose kg (lbs) in the first month. Keep in mind that your body weight can fluctuate by ±2kg (±4lbs) on any given day from water weight and what's in your stomach. Recalculate your macro ratio once a month! Changes in body composition have a large influence on the recommendations and weight loss.

If you use MFP, update your custom goals with the percentages above. Note: percentage in MFP and above is calculated for calories.

Your Weight Loss Forecast

Now to the fun stuff: a weight and body fat forecast for one year, starting today. Remember that this is a rough estimate and your personal results can differ.

Choose kg or lbs, and then play around with your chosen fat intake to see how it affects weight loss.

  • Start on .
  • Show in kg or lbs

Please enter a date and click kg or lbs to show the graph.

For all you data junkies, you can download a CSV file of your projected weight loss. This contains all the data used in the above graph.

Got Questions?

Post Your Question to /r/keto

We can help you. , and replace the first text line with your question. Or click inside this field:

Copy its text with Ctrl+C. Go to /r/keto submit site, move to the "text" field, paste it with Ctrl+V, and replace the first line with your question.

Perfect Keto Deal

I hope this weight loss calculator has been helpful to you! As a special bonus, you can get 15% off of Perfect Keto.

Comments

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Created by Martin Ankerl. I am a software developer with interest in nutrition, specifically in the ketogenic diet. You can find me on reddit, Google+, Facebook, and my blog. If you want to support this site, you can donate here. Please read the disclaimer and Cookie Consent.