Meal Calorie Counter
Add up the calories in a meal or a full day. Enter foods with their calories to see your total, how it compares to your daily target, and what's remaining.
No accounts, no databases, no food diary app — just quick arithmetic. Type in each food with its calories, set your daily target, and watch the total climb with a live progress bar. Use it for one meal, or keep adding rows through the day to see where you stand against your goal.
How to use this calculator
- Enter your daily calorie target (or estimate it with our Calorie Calculator).
- Add a row for each food: type the name and its calories.
- Use '+ Add food' for more rows and the × button to remove one.
- Click Calculate to see your total, remaining calories, and percentage of your target.
The formula
Total = sum of all food calories. Remaining = daily target − total (negative means over target). Percent of target = total / target × 100.
Worked example
A breakfast of eggs (300 cal), toast (200 cal), and juice (150 cal) totals 650 calories — 32.5% of a 2,000-calorie daily target, leaving 1,350 calories remaining for the rest of the day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I find the calorie numbers for my foods?
Packaged foods list calories on the nutrition label — that's the most reliable source. For restaurant meals, most chains publish nutrition PDFs on their websites. For whole foods and home cooking, the USDA FoodData Central database is the gold standard and free to search. When estimating restaurant or homemade dishes, round up slightly: people consistently underestimate portions.
What daily target should I set?
Start from your maintenance calories — our Calorie Calculator estimates them with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. For weight loss, a common approach is maintenance minus 500 (about a pound a week); for maintenance, use the TDEE itself; for muscle gain, add a few hundred. Your target is personal: activity, goals, and medical conditions all matter, so treat any number as a starting point to adjust.
Does this tool save my foods or history?
No — everything stays on the page and disappears when you close it. That's deliberate: it's a quick calculator, not a diet app. If you want history, trends, and barcode scanning, a dedicated tracker is the better tool. This one's advantage is speed and privacy: no signup, no data collection, just the math.
How accurate is manual calorie counting?
Honestly, within 10–20% on a good day. Labels can legally be off by up to 20%, restaurant portions vary, and eyeballing servings is error-prone. A food scale is the single biggest accuracy upgrade — weighing takes seconds and removes the guessing. Even imperfect tracking beats no tracking, though: the awareness alone changes eating behavior for most people.
Should I count drinks and cooking oils too?
Yes — they're the classic blind spots. Sugary drinks, alcohol, and coffee additions can add hundreds of calories that never feel like 'food,' and cooking oil adds about 120 calories per tablespoon. If your totals don't match your results on the scale, uncounted drinks and fats are the first place to look.