Calculate your total daily energy expenditure.

What is TDEE?

TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It is the total number of calories your body burns over 24 hours, including everything from breathing and digestion to walking, lifting, and sleeping. Knowing your TDEE turns vague goals like "eat less" or "bulk up" into a specific daily calorie number you can hit, measure, and adjust.

Your TDEE is the anchor for every nutrition decision:

• Eat below your TDEE and you lose weight.
• Eat at your TDEE and your weight stays stable.
• Eat above your TDEE and you gain weight (muscle if you train, fat if you do not).

Most adult women fall between 1,600 and 2,400 kcal/day; most adult men fall between 2,000 and 3,200 kcal/day. Athletes, manual laborers, and very large individuals exceed these ranges; sedentary older adults sit below them.

The three components of daily calorie burn

Your TDEE is the sum of three distinct energy costs:

1. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), 60 to 70%. Energy your body uses to keep you alive at complete rest: heart, brain, kidneys, liver, body temperature, cell repair. This is the largest single component and the one most calculators target. Calculate your BMR alone if that is what you need.
2. Physical activity (NEAT + exercise), 20 to 30%. Every calorie burned by movement, from formal workouts to fidgeting, posture changes, walking to the kitchen, and standing instead of sitting. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) varies by up to 400 kcal/day between similar-sized people. Your activity multiplier captures both NEAT and exercise.
3. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF), about 10%. Energy your body spends digesting and processing meals. Protein has the highest TEF (about 25% of its calories), carbohydrates around 7%, and fat only 2 to 3%. A high-protein diet quietly raises TDEE.

How TDEE is calculated

The math is two simple steps: estimate your BMR, then multiply by an activity factor.

Step 1: Estimate BMR using Mifflin-St Jeor

Men:   BMR = (10 × weight kg) + (6.25 × height cm) − (5 × age) + 5
Women: BMR = (10 × weight kg) + (6.25 × height cm) − (5 × age) − 161

Mifflin et al., 1990, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 51(2):241-7 (PMID 2305711). This equation outperforms older formulas (Harris-Benedict, 1919) in head-to-head validation across modern populations.

Step 2: Multiply by your activity factor

TDEE = BMR × Activity Factor

• 1.2 (Sedentary): desk job, no structured exercise
• 1.375 (Light): 1 to 3 days of light activity per week
• 1.55 (Moderate): 3 to 5 days of training per week
• 1.725 (Heavy): 6 to 7 days of hard training
• 1.9 (Athlete): two-a-day training or physical labor

About 80% of people overestimate their activity level by one tier. Take our 60-second activity quiz for a precise multiplier between the standard tiers.

Worked example

A 30-year-old man weighing 80 kg (176 lb) at 180 cm (5'11"), training four days per week:

BMR = (10 × 80) + (6.25 × 180) − (5 × 30) + 5
    = 800 + 1,125 − 150 + 5
    = 1,780 kcal/day

TDEE = 1,780 × 1.55 (moderate)
     = 2,759 kcal/day

To lose roughly 1 lb per week, he would eat about 2,259 kcal/day. To gain lean muscle, about 3,009 kcal/day with high protein.

Understanding your results

The calculator returns more than just TDEE. Here is what each number means and what to do with it.

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)

Calories your body burns at rest. Do not eat below this number for extended periods. Sustained sub-BMR intake triggers metabolic adaptation, muscle loss, and hormonal disruption.

TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)

Your maintenance calories. Eat this number daily and your weight stays stable across two to three weeks of consistent intake.

BMI (Body Mass Index)

A height-normalized weight category from the World Health Organization. Useful as a population screen, less useful for muscular individuals. Pair it with waist-to-height ratio or body fat percentage for a fuller picture. Standalone BMI calculator.

Macros (protein, carbs, fat)

Daily targets in grams for your goal. Standard recommendations: 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg protein, 0.7 g/kg fat minimum, carbs filling the rest. Open the Power Mode selector to compare cut, maintain, and bulk splits across low, moderate, and high carb. Macro calculator deep dive.

Goal calorie ladder

Six daily calorie targets from aggressive cut (TDEE − 1,000) through bulk (TDEE + 500). Pick the row that matches your timeline and your tolerance for hunger.

How to use your TDEE for your goal

If you want to lose weight

• Subtract 250 to 500 kcal/day from TDEE for a sustainable 0.5 to 1 lb per week loss.
• Cap your weekly weight loss at 1% of body weight. Faster than that and you risk muscle loss.
• Hit protein at 1.8 to 2.2 g/kg of body weight to preserve muscle in a deficit.
• Recalculate TDEE every 10 to 15 lb of weight change because BMR drops with mass.

If you want to maintain

• Eat at your calculated TDEE for two weeks. Weigh yourself every morning, fasted.
• If your seven-day weight average is stable (±0.5 lb week one vs week three), the estimate is accurate.
• If it drifts, adjust by 100 kcal/day in the opposite direction and retest.

If you want to build muscle

• Add 200 to 500 kcal/day above TDEE. Aim for roughly 0.5 lb of weight gain per week.
• Faster gains tip toward fat. Slower gains tip toward water and frustration.
• Train hard with progressive resistance. Calories without training build fat, not muscle.
• Hit protein at 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg of body weight. Distribute across four to five meals.

Common mistakes that wreck your TDEE estimate

1. Overestimating activity level. Most people pick "Moderate" by reflex. If your job is sedentary and you train three days a week, you are "Light" (1.375), not "Moderate" (1.55). That gap is about 250 kcal/day. Take the quiz to find your real multiplier.
2. Trusting the number forever. TDEE drops as you lose weight, drops further during sustained dieting (metabolic adaptation), and drops with age. Recalculate every six to eight weeks during active weight change.
3. Confusing BMR with TDEE. BMR is your minimum survival rate. TDEE is your actual daily burn. Eat against TDEE, never BMR. See the side-by-side comparison.
4. Under-reporting intake. Studies show people under-report by 20 to 40%. If the math says you should be losing and you are not, the most likely cause is uncounted calories (snacks, oils, restaurant meals). Weigh every food in grams for one week to test.
5. Ignoring water-weight noise. Daily weight swings 2 to 4 lb on water, sodium, and glycogen. Use a seven-day moving average, not today's number, to judge progress.

Stuck despite eating in a deficit? Read Why am I not losing weight? for the diagnostic flow.

Related calculators and guides

• BMR calculator, your resting metabolic rate alone
• Macro calculator, daily protein/carbs/fat targets
• Calorie deficit calculator, weight-loss targets
• Maintenance calorie calculator, your weight-stable number
• TDEE for women, luteal, pregnancy, breastfeeding, perimenopause, PCOS
• How accurate is TDEE?, the honest error distribution
• Activity level guide with 60-second quiz
• Mifflin-St Jeor equation explained