Daily calorie target
We estimate your resting calorie burn from your sex, age, height and weight, then adjust for your activity level and meal plan goal. This is not a measured metabolic rate, and body composition and lifestyle make individual differences.
1. Estimating resting calorie burn
We use the simplified form of the Mifflin–St Jeor equation.
10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm)
− 5 × age (years) + sex constant
Sex constant: male +5, female −161 · Unit: kcal/day
2. Factoring in your usual activity
Resting calorie burn is multiplied by the factor below to estimate your daily maintenance calories.
| Weekly activity | Factor |
|---|---|
| Light activity | 1.4 |
| 1–2 days a week | 1.5 |
| 3–4 days a week | 1.6 |
| 5–6 days a week | 1.7 |
| Every day | 1.8 |
CleanEat assigned these factors to the options with reference to the physical activity levels (PAL) in the 2023 energy intake recommendations from the U.S. National Academies. How many days you exercise cannot tell exactly how active a person is.
3. Adjusting for your goal
| Goal | Share of maintenance calories | Protein target |
|---|---|---|
| Weight loss | 85% | 1.6 g/kg |
| Muscle gain | 110% | 1.8 g/kg |
| Maintain current weight | 100% | 1.2 g/kg |
| Everyday energy | 100% | 1.2 g/kg |
| Better eating habits | 100% | 1.2 g/kg |
The calorie multipliers and protein figures for each goal are CleanEat's own meal-planning settings. They are not prescriptions for weight loss or muscle gain taken from the original Mifflin–St Jeor paper.
If the calculated target falls below 1,500 kcal for men or 1,200 kcal for women, that value is applied as a minimum. This minimum does not guarantee an adequate intake for everyone. The calorie calculator offers three goals (maintain, lose and gain), and the daily meal plan offers all five.
Protein and nutrients
Your daily protein target is the g/kg figure in the table above multiplied by a reference body weight. At a BMI of 25 or below, your actual weight is used.
Above a BMI of 25, so that the protein target does not grow too large, we take the weight at BMI 25 and add 25% of the excess weight. This adjustment applies only to protein. Calories are always calculated from your actual weight.
Reference weight = 25 × height (m) × height (m)
Adjusted weight = reference weight + (actual weight − reference weight) × 0.25
The calorie calculator sets the protein target first, gives 25% of your daily calories to fat and calculates carbohydrates from what remains. Carbs and protein count as 4 kcal per gram and fat as 9 kcal per gram, and the displayed values are rounded.
The calculator's nutrient values are targets for planning meals. The nutrients in an actual meal plan are the sum of the selected meals and ingredient portions, so they may not match the calculator exactly.
Meals and portions
By default, your daily calorie target is split into 25% for breakfast, 37.5% for lunch and 37.5% for dinner. The Everyday energy goal uses 30% for breakfast and 35% each for lunch and dinner.
After removing meals that contain the foods you chose to avoid, we compare the remaining meals on cooking level, budget, nutrition, cuisine taste and preferred protein. The plan also tries to avoid repeating the same meal, similar types of dishes or the same main protein. It does not fill all three meals with only the foods you prefer, and it does not meet every condition exactly.
Each meal's portion is scaled to match its share of your daily calories, within 0.5 to 2 times the default portion. Because of this range and the limits of the menu list, a plan can fall short of your calorie or protein target or go over your budget. When that happens, a note appears with your results.
Extra comparisons for each goal
- Maintain current weight: compares the share of calories from carbs, protein and fat.
- Everyday energy: compares the amount of vegetables and fruit and the share of fat.
- Better eating habits: compares sodium with a guideline by age. The daily comparison values are 2,300 mg for ages 18–64, 1,900 mg for ages 65–74 and 1,800 mg for age 75 and over.
Nutrient ratios and sodium follow the 2025 Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans (in Korean), and the English edition uses the same reference values. For 18-year-olds, CleanEat applies the same sodium comparison value as for ages 19–64. Seasonings such as salt and soy sauce, which are listed separately, are not counted in the nutrition totals, so your actual sodium intake may be higher than calculated.
Nutrition data
Calories, carbs, protein, fat and sodium are stored per 100 g of each ingredient and scaled to the amount used. The nutrition data reflects data as of October 2026 and is not updated in real time. The English edition uses the same nutrition values as the Korean edition.
- Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety food composition database
Entries for raw and minimally processed foods are used first. For some processed foods, we use the median of products in the same category.
- USDA FoodData Central
Fills in some ingredients that are hard to find in the Korean data, and missing values.
- Product labels and other sources
Some products use their nutrition labels. The sodium of fresh wakame follows the Korean Rural Development Administration's national standard food composition table, and a few entries without a confirmed value include estimates.
How to read amounts
Amounts are the edible weight in the state shown in the ingredient name. Raw meat and vegetables are weighed after trimming and before cooking, dry grains and beans are weighed dry, and canned foods are weighed drained. “Microwave brown rice” is the weight of the heated rice. Even if a meal name says brown rice, an ingredient listed as “Brown rice (dry)” means the weight of dry rice. One egg is counted as 58 g of edible portion, a little more than the roughly 50 g of a USDA large egg.
Actual nutrition varies with the product, variety and how it is cooked. The calories shown are the sum of each ingredient's listed calories, so after rounding, fiber and differences between data sources, they may differ from the total you get by converting carbs, protein and fat at 4, 4 and 9 kcal per gram. We do not assess whether vitamins, iron or other micronutrients are adequate.
Price data
Food cost is the price per 100 g of edible portion multiplied by the amount used and added up across the meal plan. It is not the same as what you would pay at checkout for whole packages. Prices in the English edition are in U.S. dollars.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics average retail prices
U.S. city averages from September 2026 for items such as chicken breast, ground beef, eggs, milk and some fresh produce.
- USDA ERS Purchase to Plate and Fruit and Vegetable Prices
National average prices per edible portion for many staples. The data comes from earlier years, so we adjusted it to September 2026 with the grocery price index (CPI).
- Store prices and estimates
For items without public data, such as Korean ingredients like kimchi, gochujang and doenjang, we used retailer listings from stores such as Walmart, Kroger and H Mart. Prices marked as stand-ins (for example, using the price of chicken breast for chicken tenderloin) are estimates.
Some ingredients have no price data yet. When you set a daily budget, meals that use them are left out of the plan. When you choose “No limit”, they can still appear, with the food cost shown as “Not estimated”. The daily budget options ($8, $11, $14 and $17) were chosen with reference to the USDA Food Plans.
Prices are snapshots from September to November 2026, not real-time prices. What you actually pay varies with region, store, brand, discounts and package size. Seasonings, which are listed separately, and delivery fees are not included in the calculation.