Most people know basic information about calories: you should watch them to maintain your weight and they also help you gauge how much energy you can get from a given food.
How adults should divide up their daily calories can be a complicated puzzle but The Greatist has created a guide on how to consume calories and how your body uses them.
One way the chart advises to take better control over your caloric intake is to know how many calories you should be consuming on a daily basis and then adjusting it to maintain, lose or gain weight. The first step in doing that is determining your Basal Metabolic rate and plugging it into a formula to see how many calories your body needs to survive at its current weight. From there, you can cut or add calories to best match your health needs.
Check out all the information about calories and how to count them here here.