TDEE

TDEE Calculator — Total Daily Energy Expenditure

Estimate the total number of calories your body burns in a day, combining your resting metabolism with your typical activity level, using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation.

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Enter your details to see your daily calorie needs
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Disclaimer: This calculator provides a general estimate for fitness-tracking and educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Individual metabolism varies with genetics, muscle mass, hormones, and health conditions. Consult a doctor or registered dietitian before making significant changes to your diet or exercise routine.

How Your TDEE Is Calculated

Total Daily Energy Expenditure is the number of calories your body uses across a full day — resting functions plus digestion, movement, and exercise combined. This tool first works out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then scales it up with an activity multiplier that reflects how much you move in a typical week.

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

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

Then: TDEE = BMR × activity multiplier, where the multiplier ranges from 1.2 (sedentary) to 1.9 (very active).

Using TDEE for Weight Goals

Once you know your maintenance calories, weight management becomes a matter of arithmetic rather than guesswork. Eating consistently below your TDEE creates the deficit needed for gradual fat loss, eating at it holds your weight steady, and eating above it supports muscle or weight gain. Because TDEE is an estimate rather than a lab measurement, treat the number as a starting point and adjust it every few weeks based on how your actual weight trend responds.

Reference Table: TDEE at Every Activity Level

Below the results, this calculator also lists your estimated TDEE at all five activity levels so you can see how much daily movement genuinely affects your calorie needs before committing to one activity tier.

Frequently Asked Questions

Be honest about a typical week, not your best week. If you sit most of the day and exercise occasionally, Light is usually closer to reality than Moderate. Overestimating activity is the single biggest reason people eat more than they think they're allowed and stop losing weight — when in doubt, pick the lower tier and adjust after two to three weeks of real-world tracking.
Treat TDEE as a weekly average target rather than a daily quota. Day-to-day intake naturally swings with appetite, meals out, and schedule — what matters is that your average over 7-10 days lands near your goal (maintenance, a deficit, or a surplus). Chasing an exact daily number tends to cause more stress than results.
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation was derived and validated using metric units, so entering kg and cm directly gives the most accurate result without a conversion step. If you only know your weight in pounds or height in feet and inches, a quick unit-converter search will get you the metric figures in seconds.
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