TDEE Calculator

TDEE is roughly how many calories you burn in a whole day. Enter your stats and activity level to estimate your maintenance calories.

From BMR to TDEE

Your body always burns your BMR just to stay alive. Everything you do on top of that — walking to the kitchen, typing, training, even keeping warm — adds more. TDEE bundles all of it into one number by multiplying BMR by an activity factor:

Level	Factor	Roughly
Sedentary	× 1.2	Desk job, little or no exercise
Lightly active	× 1.375	Light exercise 1–3 days/week
Moderately active	× 1.55	Exercise 3–5 days/week
Very active	× 1.725	Hard exercise 6–7 days/week
Extra active	× 1.9	Hard exercise plus a physical job

Worked example

A 30-year-old man, 180 cm, 80 kg has a BMR of about 1,780 calories. If he trains hard four times a week around a desk job (moderately active), his TDEE is 1,780 × 1.55 ≈ 2,759 calories/day. To lose about 0.5 kg a week he would eat around 2,259; to gain, around 3,259.

The four parts of TDEE

BMR — 60 to 70 percent. Energy to keep you alive at rest.
NEAT — non-exercise activity: walking, chores, standing, fidgeting. Highly variable, and the main reason two similar people have different TDEEs.
Exercise — deliberate training. Often smaller than people think: a hard 45-minute session might burn 300 to 500 calories.
Thermic effect of food — about 10 percent of what you eat, higher on high-protein diets.

Treat the number as a starting hypothesis

The activity multiplier is a broad guess. Eat at the estimate for two to three weeks, weigh yourself each morning and take the weekly average (daily weight is noisy from water and food), and adjust from there. After one or two cycles you will have a maintenance number based on your actual body. Then set a goal with the calorie calculator and macros with the macro calculator.

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Frequently asked questions

What is TDEE?

Total daily energy expenditure is every calorie you burn in 24 hours: resting metabolism (your BMR), everyday incidental movement, deliberate exercise, and the roughly 10 percent used to digest and process food. Eat at your TDEE and your weight holds steady over time.

How is TDEE calculated here?

It estimates your BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiplies by a standard activity factor from 1.2 (sedentary) to 1.9 (extra active). The multiplier rolls movement, exercise and the thermic effect of food into one figure.

How accurate are the activity factors?

They are population averages and can be off by 200 to 500 calories, especially at the extremes. Non-exercise activity — walking, standing, fidgeting — varies enormously between people at the same 'activity level'. The reliable way to dial it in: eat at the estimate for two to three weeks, track your weekly average weight, and adjust by 100 to 200 calories if the trend is not what you want.

Which activity level should I pick?

The one that matches a typical week, not your best week. If you 'work out sometimes', you are probably lightly active, not moderately active. Desk job with 2 to 3 gym sessions ≈ lightly active. Desk job with 4 to 5 hard sessions ≈ moderately active. On your feet all day plus training ≈ very or extra active.

Should I eat at my TDEE?

Eat at TDEE to maintain, below it to lose weight, above it to gain. A deficit or surplus of about 500 calories a day trends to roughly 0.5 kg (1 lb) of weight change per week. The calorie calculator applies those adjustments for you.

Does TDEE change as I lose weight?

Yes. A lighter body burns fewer calories at rest and in motion, and appetite-driven non-exercise activity often drifts down in a deficit. Expect to trim your target by 100 to 200 calories every 4 to 8 kg (10 to 20 lb) of loss, or whenever progress stalls for two to three weeks.

Is 'starvation mode' real?

The idea that eating too little makes you gain weight is a myth. But prolonged aggressive dieting does cause 'adaptive thermogenesis' — a measurable 5 to 15 percent drop in TDEE beyond what the weight loss alone predicts, plus fatigue and hunger. Moderate deficits and periodic breaks at maintenance limit it.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Figures and formulas are checked against their published sources; see the site's data notes.