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Refeed Day Calorie Calculator

Enter maintenance calories and your desired refeed surplus percentage.

How it is calculated

The tool adds a percentage on top of your maintenance intake. extra calories = maintenance × surplus % ÷ 100 and refeed calories = maintenance + extra calories. Maintenance is in kcal per day and the surplus is a percent of that maintenance figure (20 means 20%, not 20 percentage points of anything else). The extra energy is then turned into carbohydrate grams with the standard carbs g = extra calories ÷ 4, since a gram of carbohydrate supplies about 4 kcal. So the tool assumes every extra calorie is carbohydrate; the baseline part of the day is not split into macros. A surplus of 0 returns your maintenance. Results are rounded to whole kcal and grams.

Worked example

Maintenance 2,400 kcal and a 20% refeed surplus. Extra calories: 2,400 × 20 ÷ 100 = 480 kcal. Refeed day total: 2,400 + 480 = 2,880 kcal. Extra carbohydrate: 480 ÷ 4 = 120 g. So the refeed day is your normal day with roughly 120 g more carbs on top. A 10% surplus would give 2,640 kcal and 60 g of extra carbs.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Entering your current dieting calories instead of true maintenance; the surplus is then taken from the wrong base and the refeed may still be a deficit.
  • Typing the surplus as a decimal (0.2 instead of 20), which gives an extra of well under 1% of maintenance.
  • Reading 120 g as your whole carbohydrate target for the day; it is only the extra above what you normally eat.
  • Confusing a refeed with a diet break: this tool plans a single raised day, not a week at maintenance.

About this calculator

A refeed day is a planned, short-term return to eating above maintenance calories — typically maintenance plus a chosen surplus percentage — with most of the extra calories deliberately consumed as carbohydrates, used periodically during an extended calorie-restricted diet or cut. The physiological rationale is that sustained caloric restriction lowers leptin (a hormone that regulates hunger and energy expenditure) and depletes muscle glycogen stores, and a short high-carbohydrate surplus can partially and temporarily restore both.

Bodybuilders, physique competitors, and endurance athletes in a prolonged deficit use refeed days to blunt some of the metabolic adaptation and training-performance decline that comes with extended dieting, and to provide psychological relief from restrictive eating — distinct from a full 'diet break', which resets to maintenance for several days or weeks rather than a single elevated day.

This calculator takes your maintenance calories and desired refeed surplus percentage and returns your refeed-day calorie target, along with the extra calories and the grams of carbohydrate they equal. It counts all of the extra calories as carbohydrate at 4 kcal per gram, so adjust that figure yourself if you plan to eat some of the extra as protein or fat.

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