TDEE Calculator

What is TDEE?

TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It is the total calories your body uses across a day from four sources: your basal metabolic rate (BMR), everyday non-exercise movement, planned exercise, and the energy used to digest food (the thermic effect of food). Resting metabolism is the largest of the four for most people, and the activity factor is what scales it up to cover the rest. The TDEE figure is the maintenance estimate: intake around that level tends to hold weight steady. It is a prediction from an equation and an activity multiplier, not a measurement of what you personally expend.

BMR vs TDEE

BMR is what your body uses at complete rest, just keeping the lights on. TDEE is BMR multiplied by an activity factor that accounts for everything you do above resting. BMR is always smaller than TDEE for anyone who moves at all. The full comparison lives in the BMR vs TDEE guide. If you only want the resting figure, use the BMR calculator.

Activity levels explained

• Sedentary (1.2): desk job, little or no exercise.
• Lightly active (1.375): light exercise 1 to 3 days per week, or a job with a moderate amount of standing and walking.
• Moderately active (1.55): moderate exercise 3 to 5 days per week.
• Very active (1.725): hard exercise 6 to 7 days per week.
• Extra active (1.9): very hard exercise plus a physical job.

The labels describe activity patterns rather than measure them. Every step between adjacent levels is the same size, exactly 0.175 of BMR, so on a BMR near 1,400 one step moves the result by about 245 kcal per day. That makes the selected level the largest single lever on the figure this page returns, and the one input that is judged rather than measured.

Maintenance calories

Maintenance is the TDEE figure: the intake level at which the equation predicts weight holds roughly steady week to week. It is also the reference the other four figures are computed from, since each is maintenance plus or minus a round 250 or 500 kcal. Body weight moves daily with water, sodium and glycogen independently of energy balance, so a single morning reading and a maintenance estimate are describing different things.

TDEE for weight loss

The result panel shows two figures below maintenance: TDEE minus 250 and TDEE minus 500. Both are plain subtraction from the maintenance estimate rather than recommendations. Intake below maintenance is what produces a calorie deficit, but this page does not assess whether any deficit is appropriate for you, and it holds no information about your health with which to try. That judgement belongs with a clinician or a registered dietitian. The calorie deficit calculator covers the arithmetic of a chosen deficit, including how a static calories-per-pound conversion behaves over time.

TDEE for muscle gain

The result panel also shows two figures above maintenance: TDEE plus 250 and TDEE plus 500. Like the loss figures, they are the maintenance estimate plus a round number rather than a plan. Intake above maintenance is what produces a surplus; what a surplus does to body composition depends on training, protein intake and individual factors this equation does not model. Because the BMR term scales with body mass, a figure computed at one weight stops describing a materially different one. To split any calorie figure into protein, carb, and fat targets, use the macro calculator.

Common mistakes

• Selecting a higher activity level than the week actually contained. Each step is 0.175 of BMR, so the effect on the result is large.
• Reading the figure as a measurement. It is predicted from five inputs, and the page has no way to compare it against what you actually expend.
• Reading the loss and gain figures as advice. They are maintenance minus or plus 250 and 500, produced by subtraction and addition, and the page does not evaluate whether any of them fits a particular person.
• Comparing a single morning weight against a maintenance estimate. Daily weight moves with water and glycogen independently of energy balance, so the two describe different things.
• Assuming the figure updates itself. It recomputes only from the values currently in the fields, so an older figure describes the inputs it was given rather than today.

Working it out by hand

Take a woman aged 35, 5 ft 6 in tall, 150 lb, on the lightly active multiplier. The equation is defined in metric units, so the imperial figures are converted first:

1. Weight: 150 lb × 0.45359237 = 68.04 kg. The conversion factor is exact, not rounded to 0.454.
2. Height: 5 ft 6 in is 66 in, and 66 × 2.54 = 167.64 cm.
3. BMR, female form: 10 × 68.04 = 680.39, plus 6.25 × 167.64 = 1,047.75, minus 5 × 35 = 175, minus the female constant 161. That is 680.39 + 1,047.75 − 175 − 161 = 1,392 kcal.
4. TDEE: 1,392 × 1.375 (lightly active) = 1,914 kcal.

Result: a BMR near 1,392 and a TDEE near 1,914, which is what the calculator returns for the same profile.

The male form of the equation is identical except for the last term: it adds 5 instead of subtracting 161, a fixed 166 kcal difference between the two forms at the same height, weight and age. Both figures are predictions from population data, not a measurement of what you personally expend.

Edge cases

• Empty or impossible inputs. The calculator shows no result rather than a placeholder number. Age is bounded to 1 to 120, height and weight must be positive, and the computed BMR and TDEE are themselves checked before anything is displayed. A weight large enough to overflow the arithmetic produces no result rather than a nonsense one.
• Why other tools disagree. A different equation, or an activity scale with different steps, returns a different figure from the same inputs. Fitness trackers add a further layer: they estimate movement from sensors and their own models, so their daily total is built differently again.
• Activity level dominates the spread. The five multipliers run from 1.2 to 1.9, so the same BMR can produce figures nearly 60 percent apart depending only on which level is selected. That choice is self-reported and carries far more uncertainty than the equation itself.
• The estimate does not update itself. Energy needs shift as body mass, age and activity change, and the equation has no memory of what you entered before. It recomputes only from the values currently in the fields, so an older figure describes the inputs it was given, not today.

Your numbers stay in the page

Your age, sex, height, weight and activity level are processed by this page in your browser. They are not sent to a server, not stored after you close the tab, and not visible to anyone else. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.

Sources

• Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, Scott BJ, Daugherty SA, Koh YO. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;51(2):241-247 for the BMR equation this page computes, in both its male and female forms.

Mifflin-St Jeor is the only equation this calculator implements. Other predictive equations exist and remain in use elsewhere; this page does not run them. The five activity multipliers are a widely used convention rather than a finding from the paper above.