Calorie goals
The formula
How it works
Your TDEE is the total number of calories you burn in a day, once activity is added to the calories you burn at rest. It is the number to eat around to maintain your weight — and the starting point for losing or gaining.
FAQ
How do I lose or gain weight from my TDEE?
Eat below your TDEE to lose and above it to gain. A deficit or surplus of about 500 calories a day changes weight by roughly a pound a week.
Which activity level should I pick?
Be honest and count only real, sustained activity. Most people with desk jobs and a few workouts a week fall under “light” or “moderate”, not “active”.
What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?
BMR is the energy your body uses just to stay alive at complete rest — breathing, circulation, cell repair. TDEE adds everything else on top of that: exercise, daily movement, and digesting food, so it is always higher than BMR.
How accurate is the TDEE estimate?
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation used here is one of the more accurate BMR formulas, but it is still a population average, so your true number can be off by 10% or more. Treat the result as a starting point and adjust it up or down based on how your actual weight changes over two to three weeks.
Why does weight loss slow down even while eating the same calories?
As you lose weight, your body needs fewer calories to maintain itself, so your TDEE gradually drops and the same deficit shrinks over time. Recalculating your TDEE every few weeks as your weight changes keeps your targets accurate.
What is NEAT and does it affect TDEE?
NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis — the calories burned through everyday movement like fidgeting, walking and standing, separate from planned workouts. It varies a lot between people and can shift with diet, which is part of why two people with the same stats can have different real-world TDEE.
Should I eat back the calories I burn from exercise?
No, not on top of this result — the activity multiplier already accounts for your regular exercise routine, so your TDEE reflects a typical day including workouts. Eating additional calories for a single hard session on top of the estimate would double-count that activity.
About the TDEE calculator
This calculator estimates your Total Daily Energy Expenditure — every calorie your body uses in a day, including movement. It starts from your basal metabolic rate, the energy you burn just staying alive, and multiplies it by an activity factor. TDEE is the single most useful number for managing your weight, because eating around it keeps you steady, eating under it loses fat, and eating over it builds mass.
How to use it
Enter your sex, age, height and weight in metric or imperial units, then choose the activity level that best matches your week. The calculator shows your BMR and your TDEE, plus target calories for losing, maintaining or gaining weight. For example, a moderately active 30-year-old man of 180 cm and 80 kg has a TDEE of around 2,750 calories. Pick your activity level honestly — overestimating it is the most common reason a plan stalls.
The formula
TDEE is your basal metabolic rate times an activity factor, . The BMR comes from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, and the factor ranges from about 1.2 for a desk-bound life up to 1.9 for hard daily training. Weight-change targets then adjust that number: subtracting about 500 calories a day gives roughly a pound of loss per week, since a pound of fat holds about 3,500 calories.
Where it is used
TDEE is the backbone of almost every diet and fitness plan. Dietitians and coaches use it to set calorie targets for weight loss, maintenance or muscle gain, and fitness apps calculate it behind the scenes to build daily goals. Athletes use it to fuel training without under-eating, and anyone tracking calories uses it as the line to aim above or below. It turns the vague idea of “eating right” into a concrete daily number.