How many carbs per day?
The honest answer: it depends on how much you move. Here's how to find your number.
There's no single right number
Carb needs aren't fixed — they scale with how much energy you burn. A marathoner and a desk worker have wildly different needs, and the same person needs more on a hard training day than a rest day. The useful unit is grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight.
Targets by activity
Use these daily ranges as a starting point:
- • Mostly sedentary: 3–5 g/kg
- • Light exercise (a few times a week): 4–6 g/kg
- • Moderate training (~1 hr/day): 5–7 g/kg
- • Hard endurance training: 6–10 g/kg
- • Very high load / racing: 8–12 g/kg
Quality matters as much as quantity
Hit your number mostly with minimally-processed, fiber-rich carbs — whole grains, fruit, legumes, potatoes — which give steadier energy and better nutrition. Save fast, refined carbs for around hard exercise, when they're a feature, not a bug.
Do the math for you
Multiply your body weight in kg by your activity range. A 70 kg person training moderately needs ~350–490g of carbs a day. Our daily carb calculator does this instantly by weight, activity and goal.
Frequently asked
How many carbs to lose weight?+
Weight loss is driven by total energy balance, not carbs specifically. Stay active, keep protein and fiber high, and set carbs toward the lower end of your activity range — but don't cut so low that training quality suffers.
Is 200g of carbs a day a lot?+
For an active 70 kg person, 200g is on the moderate-to-low side (about 3 g/kg). For a sedentary person it's plenty. Context — your size and activity — decides.