Everything you eat contains calories. The key is balancing the calories you take in with the calories you burn throughout the day. To maintain good health, it's important to consume the right amount of calories from the right types of sources. While healthy food choices are recommended for everyone, the number of calories can vary greatly depending upon your age, gender and physical activity level. The healthiest calories come from vegetables, whole grains, fruits, lean cuts of meat, low-fat dairy and nuts/seeds/legumes.
Kids/Teens
Kids and teens need adequate nutrition to grow and develop properly. Aggressive calorie-cutting initiatives and restrictive diets shouldn't be the focus of a youngster's diet because that may eliminate vital nutrients from his diet. Instead, a focus should be on avoiding unhealthy calorie sources, such as soda, sugary fruit juices and high-calorie snacks. According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, children aged 2 to 5 years old need 1,000 to 1,400 calories a day. Preteens should aim for 1,400 to 2,200 calories per day. Teenage boys need slightly more, at 2,200 to 2,800 calories, while teen girls should consume about 2,000 calorie per day. This is assuming the child is physically active for at least 60 minutes per day.
Adult Weight Maintenance
The 2010 Dietary Guidelines does not recommend adults consume fewer than 1,600 calories per day for weight maintenance purposes. The general guideline for moderately active male adults is 2,200 to 2,800 calories per day. An adult's calorie needs is at its peak around ages 19 to 25 years old. Moderately active adult women need slightly fewer calories at 1,800 to 2,200 calories per day. Sedentary adults can safely consume about 200 calories fewer than these recommendations, while very active adults can safely target 200 calories above these same recommendations.
Adult Weight Loss
It may be safe for some adults to take a more aggressive dieting approach to lose weight. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, most adult women can safely lose weight by consuming as little as 1,000 to 1,200 calories per day. Likewise, most adult men can safely target 1,200 to 1,600 calories each day. Very active adults may require additional calories. Check with your doctor to be sure a low-calorie diet of 1,000 to 1,600 calories is right for you.
Special Cases
In some extreme cases it may be safe to consume as little as 800 calories per day over a period of several months. These are called very low-calorie diets, or VLCDs, and they are a doctor-supervised and prescribed treatment for helping obese patients lose weight quickly for health reasons. The majority of calories come from doctor-prescribed meal replacements, liquids and minimal health foods. According to the Weight-Control Information Network -- a division of the National Institutes of Health -- VLCDs help most patients safely lose 3 to 5 lbs. per week, or about 44 lbs. over the course of 12 weeks.
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