The amount over or below your maintenance calories which you should eat is not something which is easy to answer, but we will give some very solid guidelines along with our rationale for what we recommend. Firstly, it’s very difficult to give a definitive answer, especially as a hard and fast number (it’s often said that you should eat 500 calories below maintenance, or 500 above, on the theory that 3500kcals roughly equates to 1lbs of fat) because of the factors we just talked about. If two people eat 500 calories below their maintenance calorie level, an obese person might end up eating North of 3500 calories, lose weight very slowly and not really improve their health while a small female might end up on so little food she can’t function. If we give a definite figure then some might lose weight very quickly and suffer, while the other might lose very slowly and suffer. On top of this, two identical people might eat the same deficit and while one will find it a breeze the other will find every day a struggle. As such, the guidelines are a little more vague.