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TDEE Calculator

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TDEE Calorie Calculator

Calculate your daily calorie needs (BMR and TDEE) based on age, weight, height, and activity level.

Guide to TDEE

What is TDEE?

Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories you burn each day. It consists of basal metabolic rate (BMR) that maintains vital functions, plus additional energy spent on physical activity, digestion, and daily tasks. Knowing your TDEE allows you to precisely control body weight - eating less will cause weight loss, eating more will cause weight gain.

Physical activity levels

  • Sedentary (1.2) - desk job, no regular exercise
  • Lightly active (1.375) - exercise 1-3 days per week, walking
  • Moderately active (1.55) - exercise 3-5 days per week
  • Active (1.725) - exercise 6-7 days per week, intense training
  • Very active (1.9) - heavy daily training or physical work

How to use TDEE?

TDEE is the foundation of nutrition planning. To lose weight, create a 300-500 calorie deficit daily - this will help lose about 0.5 kg per week. For muscle gain, add 200-300 calories while combining with strength training. Remember TDEE is an estimate - monitor results for 2-3 weeks and adjust calories as needed.

Factors affecting metabolism

Metabolism changes with age - after 30 it decreases by about 1-2% per decade. Sleep affects appetite-regulating hormones, lack of sleep increases ghrelin levels. Stress increases cortisol, which promotes fat storage. Also diet-induced thermogenesis (energy for digestion) accounts for about 10% of total energy expenditure.

A 500 kcal deficit shrinks to 283 by the end of the year

Total daily energy expenditure is mostly the cost of being alive, not the cost of exercise. For a sedentary adult, resting metabolism is 83.3% of the total — and because that resting figure falls as body mass falls, a deficit held constant on paper quietly erodes. Hold intake fixed for a year and the 500 kcal gap you started with is worth 283.

How it works

  • Estimates resting metabolic rate with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then scales it by an activity multiplier.
  • Shows what each activity level actually adds, which is less than the labels suggest.
  • Makes the plateau visible, because a fixed intake produces a shrinking deficit rather than steady loss.
Mifflin-St Jeor:
  men    BMR = 10W + 6.25H − 5A + 5
  women  BMR = 10W + 6.25H − 5A − 161
    W in kg, H in cm, A in years

TDEE = BMR × activity multiplier
  1.2 sedentary   1.375 light   1.55 moderate   1.725 very   1.9 athlete

1 kg of body mass ≈ 7,700 kcal

Worked example

An 80 kg, 180 cm, 35-year-old man, then a year of eating 500 kcal below maintenance.

  1. BMR = 1,755 kcal/day
  2. sedentary TDEE = 2,106 · moderate = 2,720 · athlete = 3,335
  3. day 30: 78.1 kg, real deficit 478 kcal
  4. day 180: 69.8 kg, real deficit 378 kcal
  5. day 365: 61.9 kg, real deficit 283 kcal

The naive arithmetic predicts 23.7 kg lost in a year. The real figure is 18.1 kg — a 24% shortfall, produced entirely by the fact that a lighter body costs less to run. Nothing went wrong; the model that ignores this was simply wrong from day one.

Reading the result

  • Resting metabolism dominates. At 1,755 kcal/day you burn 73 kcal an hour doing absolutely nothing, and an hour of hard running nets only about 527 above that. Exercise is worth doing for many reasons; out-earning your own metabolism is not usually one of them.
  • The activity multipliers move the total less than their labels imply. Going from sedentary to moderate — three to five sessions a week — adds 614 kcal/day, a 29.2% increase. That is real, but it is not the difference between the numbers most people assume.
  • Mifflin-St Jeor is a population regression, not a measurement. Individual resting metabolism varies by roughly ±10% around the prediction at the same height, weight and age, so treat the output as the centre of a range and adjust from observed results.
  • This is an estimate, not clinical advice. Anyone managing a medical condition, pregnancy, an eating disorder history, or taking medication that affects metabolism should work from professional guidance rather than an equation.

Common questions

Why did my weight loss stall when I did not change anything?
Because you did change something: you got lighter. A smaller body has a lower resting metabolism, so the same intake produces a smaller deficit each month. In the worked example the gap fell from 500 to 283 kcal without a single change to what was eaten.
Is it better to eat less or move more?
Arithmetically, intake is the larger lever for most people, because resting metabolism is 83.3% of a sedentary total and exercise is added on top of it. But the two are not equivalent in other respects, and a plan you will keep beats an optimal one you will not.

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