Free TDEE Calculator

On this page

1. What is TDEE?
2. The four parts of your TDEE
3. How the calculator works
4. How each detail changes your TDEE
5. Activity levels
6. TDEE calculation examples
7. Typical TDEE by weight and activity
8. How to use your TDEE
9. How accurate is it?
10. Calculate TDEE by hand
11. Why your TDEE changes
12. TDEE vs BMR
13. Five common TDEE mistakes
14. Who should not rely on it
15. Questions

What is TDEE?

TDEE stands for total daily energy expenditure: the total number of calories your body burns in 24 hours. It covers everything, from keeping your heart beating while you sleep to digesting lunch, walking to the bus and any workout you do.

It matters because it tells you how much you can eat without gaining or losing weight. That amount is called your maintenance calories. Eat less than your TDEE and your body makes up the difference from its stores, mostly fat, so you lose weight. Eat more and it stores the extra, so you gain. Every sensible plan, whether the goal is fat loss or muscle, starts from this number. Our guide What is TDEE? goes deeper.

The four parts of your TDEE: BMR, TEF, NEAT and exercise

The surprise for most people is how small exercise is next to resting metabolism and everyday movement. A hard 45-minute gym session might burn 300 to 400 kcal. Spending the day on your feet instead of in a chair can burn more than that. Research on non-exercise activity has found differences of up to about 2,000 kcal a day between people of similar size, mostly from how much they move outside the gym.

How this TDEE calculator works

First it estimates your BMR from your sex, age, height and weight. By default it uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (1990), which a systematic review for the American Dietetic Association found predicted resting metabolic rate within 10% of measured values in more people than any other common equation.

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

Then it multiplies your BMR by an activity factor:

TDEE = BMR × activity factor

If you know your body fat percentage, you can switch to Katch-McArdle or Cunningham, which work from lean body mass and suit lean, muscular people better. Harris-Benedict (revised in 1984) is included for comparison. All four equations, with their sources, are on our formulas page, and the reasoning behind every default is in our methodology.

Your results show your TDEE and BMR, calories for seven goals from “lose fast” to “gain fast”, your BMI, macros in four diet styles, your TDEE at every activity level and a side-by-side comparison of the formulas. Everything is calculated in your browser, so nothing you type is sent to us.

How weight, height, age, sex and activity change your TDEE

• Weight: each kilo adds 10 kcal to your BMR, so 10 kg (22 lb) adds about 120 to 190 kcal to your TDEE, depending on your activity level.
• Height: each centimetre adds 6.25 kcal, so 10 cm (4 in) adds about 63 kcal to your BMR.
• Age: each year takes off 5 kcal. Ten birthdays cost you about 50 kcal of BMR, roughly half a banana.
• Sex: at the same size, the equation gives men 166 kcal more than women, mainly reflecting more lean mass on average.
• Activity level: by far the biggest lever. Going from 1.2 to 1.9 raises your TDEE by almost 60%.
• Body fat (optional): lets you use the lean-mass formulas, which can be more accurate if you are very lean or muscular.

So if you are unsure about one input, make it your activity level. Getting that right matters far more than a kilo here or a year there.

Activity levels and multipliers

Not sure which to pick? Choose the lower one. Most people overestimate how active they are, and a desk job with three gym sessions a week is usually “lightly” or “moderately” active, not “very active”. Your job counts too: a nurse, waiter or builder can be lightly or moderately active without a single workout. The activity level calculator works it out from your job, steps and workouts, and our guide to TDEE activity levels has more examples.

TDEE calculation examples

A 30-year-old man, 175 cm (5′9″) and 80 kg (176 lb), who exercises 3 to 5 days a week:

BMR = 10 × 80 + 6.25 × 175 − 5 × 30 + 5 = 1,749 kcal TDEE = 1,749 × 1.55 = 2,711 kcal a day

To lose weight at a moderate pace (20% below TDEE) he would eat about 2,168 kcal a day, a deficit of roughly 540 kcal, or around 0.5 kg (1 lb) a week at first.

A 35-year-old woman, 165 cm (5′5″) and 65 kg (143 lb), lightly active:

BMR = 10 × 65 + 6.25 × 165 − 5 × 35 − 161 = 1,345 kcal TDEE = 1,345 × 1.375 = 1,850 kcal a day

A 62-year-old man in US units, 5′8″ and 190 lb, who walks most days and plays golf once a week (lightly active). First convert: 68 inches × 2.54 = 172.7 cm, and 190 lb × 0.4536 = 86.2 kg.

BMR = 10 × 86.2 + 6.25 × 172.7 − 5 × 62 + 5 = 1,636 kcal TDEE = 1,636 × 1.375 = 2,250 kcal a day

Typical TDEE by weight and activity

These Mifflin-St Jeor estimates show how much body size and activity move the number. For each five years younger than 35, add roughly 30 to 50 kcal; for each five years older, take the same off.

All figures are kcal a day. Your own number will differ with your height, age and true activity, which is what the calculator above is for.

How to use your TDEE

To lose weight

Eat 15 to 25% below your TDEE. For most people that is a deficit of 300 to 700 kcal a day, which leads to roughly 0.25 to 0.65 kg (0.5 to 1.4 lb) of weight loss a week at first. Keep protein high (1.6 to 2.2 g per kg of body weight) and do strength training to keep muscle. Try not to lose more than about 1% of your body weight a week, and don’t go below about 1,200 kcal (women) or 1,500 kcal (men) a day without medical supervision. The calorie deficit calculator shows how long your goal will take, and our guide to using TDEE for weight loss walks through the whole plan.

To keep your weight

Eat around your TDEE. Your weight will still move up and down by 0.5 to 2 kg from day to day because of water, salt and food in your gut, so look at the weekly average, not single weigh-ins. The maintenance calorie calculator includes a two-week test to confirm your number.

To gain muscle

Eat 5 to 15% above your TDEE with enough protein and a strength-training plan. A “lean gain” of about 5 to 10% keeps fat gain low. The lean bulk calculator sets the surplus from your training experience, and the macro calculator splits your calories into protein, carbs and fat.

For someone with a TDEE of 2,500 kcal, the goals look like this:

How accurate is a TDEE calculator?

For most adults, equations like Mifflin-St Jeor land within about 10% of a lab measurement, but for some people they are off by more. Your real burn depends on things no formula sees: muscle mass, genetics, hormones, medicines, sleep, how much you move outside workouts, and how your body adapts when you diet.

Some groups are more likely to be missed:

• Very muscular people usually burn more than weight-based formulas predict. Enter your body fat and try Katch-McArdle.
• Older adults with little muscle may burn somewhat less.
• People of some ethnic backgrounds. The best-known equations were built mostly from people of European descent, and studies in some Asian and tropical populations have found that standard equations can overestimate resting energy.
• Anyone with a condition or medicine that affects metabolism, such as an underactive or overactive thyroid.

Treat the number as a starting point. Eat at your target for 2 to 4 weeks, track your weight, then adjust: if the weekly average isn’t moving the way you want, change your intake by 100 to 200 kcal a day. Our guide on how accurate TDEE calculators are explains where the error comes from.

The TDEE Calculator app and our adaptive TDEE calculator do this for you. They take your average daily intake and your weight trend over the last four weeks and work out your measured TDEE:

Measured TDEE = average intake − (weight trend per day × 7,700 kcal per kg)

How to calculate TDEE by hand

1. Use metric units. Weight in kg = pounds × 0.4536. Height in cm = inches × 2.54.
2. Work out your BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation above.
3. Multiply by your activity factor from the table: 1.2, 1.375, 1.55, 1.725 or 1.9. That is your TDEE.
4. Adjust for your goal: multiply by 0.8 to lose weight at a moderate pace, or by 1.05 to 1.1 to gain slowly.

Our TDEE formula guide works through more examples, including all four equations side by side.

Why your TDEE changes

Your TDEE isn’t fixed. It falls as you lose weight, because a lighter body costs less to run, and it rises as you gain or move more. After a long diet it can sit a little lower than your new size predicts, partly because people tend to move less without noticing. Age matters less than most people think: a large 2021 study found that energy use, once body size is accounted for, is fairly stable from about 20 to 60.

A simple rule: recalculate after every 4 to 5 kg (10 lb) of change, or whenever your job or training changes. Our guide on why TDEE changes during weight loss shows how big the drop usually is.

TDEE vs BMR

Eating at your BMR is not a sensible diet target. For most people it is a very large deficit. Use the BMR calculator to see how the four equations compare, or read BMR vs TDEE for the full comparison.

Five common TDEE calculator mistakes

1. Picking a higher activity level than your real week. It is the most common reason a plan doesn’t work. Start lower and let your weigh-ins move you up.
2. Adding exercise calories on top. Your activity level already includes your usual training. Adding a watch’s estimate counts it twice, and wrist trackers often overestimate calories burned anyway.
3. Judging the result by one weigh-in. Water can hide or exaggerate fat loss for days. Use weekly averages and give any change at least two weeks.
4. Forgetting the small things. Cooking oil, sauces, drinks and bites while cooking can easily add 200 to 400 kcal a day. Weighing food for a couple of weeks shows where it goes.
5. Never updating the number. A TDEE from 10 kg ago is out of date. Recalculate as your weight, job or training changes.

If you have been eating below your TDEE for weeks without results, our checklist for when you’re not losing weight goes through every likely cause.

Who should not rely on a TDEE calculator

• Children and teenagers. Growing bodies need extra energy that adult equations don’t include. See TDEE for teenagers.
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding. Commonly used reference values add about 340 kcal a day in the second trimester, about 450 in the third, and around 330 to 400 while breastfeeding. Your midwife or doctor can tailor this to you.
• Medical conditions. Diabetes, kidney disease, thyroid problems and many medicines change your needs. Ask your doctor or a registered dietitian.
• A history of disordered eating. Counting calories can do more harm than good. Please talk to a professional first.