TDEE Calculator
Work out exactly how many calories you burn in a day — and how many you should eat to lose fat, maintain, or build muscle. Takes about twenty seconds. Free, and we do not hold your result hostage for an email.
What is TDEE?
Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories you burn in a day — everything from breathing and digesting to walking to the car and training. It is the single most useful number in nutrition, because it is the line you eat under to lose fat, at to maintain, and over to build muscle.
TDEE is made of four parts:
- BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) — the calories you would burn lying in bed all day. Roughly 70% of your total.
- NEAT — all the movement that is not exercise: pacing, fidgeting, carrying groceries, chasing kids. Wildly variable between people.
- EA (Exercise Activity) — purposeful training. Usually smaller than people assume.
- TEF (Thermic Effect of Food) — the energy cost of digesting what you eat, about 10% of intake.
How this calculator works
We use the Mifflin-St Jeor equation — the most accurate of the common BMR formulas for the general population — then multiply by an activity factor to get your TDEE.
Men: BMR = (10 × kg) + (6.25 × cm) − (5 × age) + 5
Women: BMR = (10 × kg) + (6.25 × cm) − (5 × age) − 161
Then: TDEE = BMR × activity multiplier (1.2 sedentary up to 1.9 extremely active).
For fat loss we apply a 20% deficit. For muscle gain, a 10% surplus. Not the reckless 1,200-calorie numbers you will find elsewhere — there is a reason for that, and it is the next section.
Never eat below your BMR
This calculator will not let you. If the deficit you pick would drop you under your BMR, it raises the number back up and tells you why.
Your BMR is what your body needs to keep your heart beating and your brain running. Eat under it for long and you do not just lose fat — you lose muscle, your energy craters, your training collapses, and the weight comes back the moment you eat normally again. That is the cycle that makes people say “nothing works for me.”
Most calculators will happily hand a 5-foot-4 woman a 1,200-calorie target. We will not.
What to do with your number
- Eat at it for two weeks. Do not change anything else. Weigh yourself in the same conditions each morning and take the weekly average — daily weight is mostly water and noise.
- Look at what actually happened. Losing about 0.5–1% of bodyweight per week is the sweet spot for fat loss while holding onto muscle. Faster than that and you are burning muscle.
- Adjust by 100–200 calories, not 500. Then repeat.
The calculator gives you an estimate. Your body gives you the answer. The number is a hypothesis; the next two weeks are the experiment.
Why your TDEE number is not working
If you have calculated this before, eaten to it, and nothing happened — it is almost never the maths. It is usually one of these:
- You overstated your activity level. By far the most common. “Moderately active” means moderate exercise 3–5 days a week, not a desk job plus a walk.
- You are under-reporting intake. Not lying — everybody does this. Oils, drinks, the bites while cooking. It is typically a 20–30% gap.
- Your NEAT dropped. When you cut calories your body quietly moves less. You do not notice; the scale does.
- You never gave it long enough. Two weeks minimum before you change anything.
Information was never the thing you were missing. A calculator can hand you a number. It cannot adjust it when life shifts, hold you to it on the week everything falls apart, or tell you the truth when you do not want to hear it. That is what a coach is for.
Related free tools
- Macro Calculator — split your calories into protein, carbs and fat.
- BMR Calculator — the calories you burn at complete rest.
- The Edit — our nutrition and training library.
TDEE, answered
How accurate is a TDEE calculator?
Any TDEE calculator is an estimate with a realistic margin of roughly plus or minus 10%. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation used here is the most accurate of the common formulas, but it cannot see your genetics, your NEAT, your sleep, or your training history. Treat the number as a starting point: eat at it for two weeks, track the result, and adjust from what your body actually does.
Should I eat below my BMR to lose weight faster?
No. Your BMR is the energy your body needs for basic survival. Eating below it reliably costs you muscle, tanks your energy and training quality, and drives the rebound that makes people regain more than they lost. This calculator will not return a target below your BMR — if your selected deficit would go under it, we raise the number and tell you.
How big should my calorie deficit be to lose fat?
A 20% deficit from your TDEE is a sensible default and what this calculator applies. That generally produces about 0.5 to 1% of bodyweight lost per week — fast enough to see progress, slow enough to keep your muscle. Aggressive deficits do not get you there faster; they get you there smaller, weaker, and more likely to regain it.
What is the difference between BMR, RMR and TDEE?
BMR is what you would burn at complete rest — heart, lungs, brain. RMR is measured similarly but slightly higher (usually within 10%), because it includes small movements and digestion. TDEE is everything: BMR plus digestion, plus daily movement, plus exercise. TDEE is the number you actually eat against.
How often should I recalculate my TDEE?
Every time your bodyweight changes by about 10 pounds, or whenever your activity level meaningfully shifts. As you lose weight your TDEE falls — a smaller body burns fewer calories — which is exactly why progress stalls on a target that used to work.
Do I need to track macros, or just calories?
Calories decide whether you lose or gain weight. Macros decide whether that weight is fat or muscle. If you are training and want to keep the muscle you have, hit your protein target first — roughly 1 gram per pound of bodyweight — and let carbs and fat fill the rest around your preferences.
A number is not a plan. You now know roughly what to eat. What a calculator cannot do is adjust that number when life shifts, hold you to it in week six, or tell you the truth when the scale has not moved and you are ready to quit.
That is coaching — and it is the only part of this a free tool cannot replace. Book a free 15-minute consult and we will tell you honestly whether you need us.