TDEE Calculator
Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the number of calories you burn in a full day. Use this calculator to find your BMR and TDEE based on your stats and activity level.
Built and reviewed by Jesse · Last reviewed
Fill in your details to see your daily calorie burn.
- Select your sex. Choose male or female — it changes the resting-metabolism constant.
- Enter your age, height, and weight. Use either metric or imperial units; the calculator converts internally.
- Pick your activity level. Base it on structured exercise per week, not general daily movement. When unsure, choose one level lower.
- Read your BMR and TDEE. BMR is your at-rest calorie burn; TDEE is your maintenance level — the calories that keep your weight stable.
The calculator follows a two-step process:
- Calculate BMR — Your Basal Metabolic Rate is the energy your body needs just to keep organs functioning, maintain body temperature, and sustain basic cellular processes. We use the Mifflin-St Jeor formula, which is widely considered the most accurate for the general population.
- Multiply by activity level — Your TDEE is your BMR scaled up by how active you are. Sedentary (little or no exercise) uses a 1.2 multiplier, while athlete-level training uses 1.9.
Your TDEE is your maintenance calorie level. To lose weight, eat 300–500 calories below TDEE. To gain weight or muscle, eat 200–300 above it. To maintain, eat at TDEE.
The activity multiplier applied to your BMR:
| Activity level | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| Sedentary (little or no exercise) | 1.2 |
| Lightly active (1–3 days/week) | 1.375 |
| Moderately active (3–5 days/week) | 1.55 |
| Very active (6–7 days/week) | 1.725 |
| Athlete (twice-daily training) | 1.9 |
A single multiplier hides three quite different things. Resting metabolism is most of the total and is not yours to change day to day. Digestion takes a fixed cut: on a mixed diet eaten at energy balance, diet-induced thermogenesis runs at 5 to 15% of daily expenditure, so 10% is a fair working figure — higher if your diet is high in protein, lower if it is high in fat. What is left over is movement: training, plus everything else you do while awake. For a 35-year-old woman of 168 cm and 68 kg, with a BMR of 1,394 calories, the three parts fall out like this:
| Activity level | Multiplier | TDEE | Digestion (10%) | Movement (the rest) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sedentary (little or no exercise) | 1.2 | 1,673 | 167 | 112 |
| Lightly active (1–3 days/week) | 1.375 | 1,917 | 192 | 331 |
| Moderately active (3–5 days/week) | 1.55 | 2,161 | 216 | 551 |
| Very active (6–7 days/week) | 1.725 | 2,405 | 241 | 770 |
| Athlete (twice-daily training) | 1.9 | 2,649 | 265 | 990 |
Resting metabolism is 1,394 calories in every row. The movement column is what the multiplier is really claiming about your week.
The top row of that movement column is the interesting one. At the sedentary setting, the whole day's movement budget is about 112calories — roughly half an hour of easy walking, for an entire day. The doubly-labelled-water literature puts the floor of human daily expenditure at about 1.2 times BMR, a figure derived from non-ambulant subjects, with elite endurance athletes at the other end near 4.5 times. In other words, the calculator's lowest setting is the measured lower limit for people who do not walk. If you get up, take stairs, and move around a building, you are probably above it, and the lightly active setting will describe you better.
At the top end the movement column reaches 990 calories, and only part of that is training. Levine and colleagues overfed 16 adults by 1,000 calories a day for eight weeks and found that two-thirds of the rise in their total expenditure came from non-exercise activity thermogenesis — fidgeting, standing, walking about — and that differences in it accounted for a ten-fold spread in how much fat they stored. Nobody decides that consciously, and it moves in the wrong direction when you diet. It is the main reason two people with the same estimate here can need targets hundreds of calories apart, and the reason a step count is worth watching during a deficit.
The calculator returns one number for every day of the week, but no real week is flat: training days cost more than rest days, and sleep, stress, and step counts all move. That is not a problem, because energy balance does not settle up at midnight. What matters is the total over a week or two.
For the same woman at the moderately active setting, the estimate is 2,161 calories a day, which is 15,127 across the week. Seen that way, an 800-calorie meal out is 37% of a day and 5% of the week — worth planning around, not worth a spiral. Three practical consequences:
- Judge intake against weekly averages. Compare the average of one week with the average of the next, and use the same window for your weight. Single days tell you almost nothing.
- Do not add exercise calories on top. The activity multiplier already includes your training. Logging a session in a tracker and eating those calories back counts them twice, which is one of the most common ways a deficit quietly disappears.
- You can vary the days. Eating a little more on training days and less on rest days, at the same weekly total, is a legitimate way to run this — see the calorie deficit calculator for setting the total, and why TDEE calculators are estimates for measuring your own maintenance instead of predicting it.
TDEE is the single most important number in nutrition planning. Without knowing how many calories you burn, you're guessing at your intake targets. A 200-calorie miscalculation can mean the difference between losing a pound a week and spinning your wheels.
Most people underestimate their TDEE when dieting (leading to overly aggressive deficits and metabolic slowdown) or overestimate it when trying to gain (leading to excess fat gain). Start with the calculator's estimate, track your intake for two weeks, and adjust based on your actual weight trend.
- Overestimating activity level.If you work a desk job and train three times a week, you're "lightly active" or "moderately active" — not "very active." Be honest; the labels are broader than they sound.
- Treating TDEE as exact. The activity multipliers are population averages. Your actual TDEE could be 10–15% higher or lower. Use this number as a starting point, then adjust based on results.
- Not updating as you lose or gain weight. TDEE drops as you get lighter and rises as you get heavier. Recalculate every 5–10 pounds of change.
Mifflin-St Jeor equation (BMR)
Men: BMR = 10 x weight(kg) + 6.25 x height(cm) - 5 x age + 5
Women: BMR = 10 x weight(kg) + 6.25 x height(cm) - 5 x age - 161- BMR
- = basal metabolic rate, in calories/day
- weight
- = body weight in kilograms
- height
- = height in centimeters
- age
- = age in years
TDEE (maintenance calories)
TDEE = BMR x activity factor- 1.2
- = sedentary (little or no exercise)
- 1.375
- = lightly active (1-3 days/week)
- 1.55
- = moderately active (3-5 days/week)
- 1.725
- = very active (6-7 days/week)
- 1.9
- = athlete (twice-daily training)
What is TDEE?
TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure — the total number of calories you burn in a day, including resting metabolism (BMR), physical activity, digestion, and daily movement. It's your maintenance calorie level.
What is BMR and how is it different from TDEE?
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the calories you burn at complete rest just to keep your body alive. TDEE is BMR plus the calories burned from activity and movement. TDEE is always higher than BMR unless you're literally bedridden.
How accurate is this TDEE calculator?
The calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which has a margin of error around ±10% for most people. Factors like muscle mass, genetics, and non-exercise activity (fidgeting, standing, etc.) can cause individual variation. Use the result as a starting estimate and adjust based on real-world tracking.
Which activity level should I choose?
Choose based on structured exercise frequency, not total movement. If you train 3 times a week and have a desk job, pick 'moderately active' — even if you walk your dog daily. When in doubt, start one level lower and adjust up if you're losing weight too fast.
Should I eat at my TDEE to maintain weight?
Yes, eating at TDEE should keep your weight stable over time. In practice, daily fluctuations (water, digestion, sodium) will mask short-term trends, so track your average weekly weight over 2–4 weeks to confirm you're truly maintaining.
How much below TDEE should I eat to lose weight?
A deficit of 300–500 calories per day (roughly 10–25% below TDEE) is sustainable for most people and leads to 0.5–1 lb of fat loss per week. Aggressive deficits (>25% below TDEE) work faster but increase the risk of muscle loss, metabolic adaptation, and diet fatigue.
Do I need to recalculate TDEE as I lose weight?
Yes. As you lose weight, both your BMR and TDEE drop because there's less body mass to fuel. Recalculate every 5–10 lbs of weight change to keep your calorie targets accurate.
What is TDEE actually made up of?
Three parts. Resting metabolism (BMR) is the largest and the least variable. Digestion takes 5 to 15% of daily expenditure on a mixed diet, nearer the top of that range on a high-protein diet. Everything else is movement — training plus all the walking, standing, and fidgeting that fills a day. For a 35-year-old woman of 168 cm and 68 kg at the sedentary setting, that movement slice is only about 112 calories, which is why the sedentary bucket fits fewer people than choose it.
Should I add my workout calories on top of my TDEE?
No. The activity multiplier already accounts for your training, so eating back the calories a watch or app reports for a session counts them twice. If you want to eat more on training days, keep the weekly total the same and shift calories from rest days instead.
Is the sedentary multiplier of 1.2 right for a desk job?
Usually not. Analyses of doubly-labelled-water measurements put the floor of human daily energy expenditure at roughly 1.2 times BMR, based on non-ambulant people, with elite endurance athletes at about 4.5 times. If you walk around, take stairs, and run errands — even with no formal exercise — the lightly active setting normally describes you better than the lowest one.
Can I use TDEE to gain muscle?
Absolutely. To build muscle, eat 200–300 calories above your TDEE (a slight surplus) and train with progressive overload. Eating too far above TDEE leads to unnecessary fat gain; eating at or below it makes muscle growth much slower.
References
- Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;51(2):241-247.
- Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics — estimating energy needs and activity factors.
- Black AE, Coward WA, Cole TJ, Prentice AM. Human energy expenditure in affluent societies: an analysis of 574 doubly-labelled water measurements. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1996;50(2):72-92.
- Westerterp KR. Diet induced thermogenesis. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2004;1(1):5.
- Levine JA, Eberhardt NL, Jensen MD. Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat gain in humans. Science. 1999;283(5399):212-214.
FitCalcs calculators provide general estimates for healthy adults and are not medical advice.
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