TDEE Calculator
Estimate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure — the calories you burn per day, including activity.
What is TDEE?
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is an estimate of how many calories your body burns in a day, including everything from basic organ function to walking around and deliberate exercise. It's the number most calorie targets — for weight loss, maintenance, or weight gain — are built from.
How TDEE is calculated
This calculator first estimates your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) — the calories you'd burn at complete rest — using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, one of the most widely validated formulas for this purpose:
BMR = 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age + 5 (men) or − 161 (women)
BMR is then multiplied by an activity factor — ranging from 1.2 for a sedentary lifestyle up to 1.9 for very active people with hard exercise and a physical job — to arrive at your TDEE.
How to use this calculator
Select your unit system, enter your sex, age, height, and weight, pick the activity level that best matches your typical week, and press Calculate TDEE. You'll see your BMR, your maintenance TDEE, and a table of daily calorie targets for mild or fast weight loss and weight gain, built by adding or subtracting a calorie deficit or surplus from maintenance.
Using your results
To lose weight, eat below your maintenance TDEE; to gain weight, eat above it. A deficit or surplus of roughly 250 kcal/day is considered mild and sustainable, while 500 kcal/day is a faster pace that's harder to maintain long-term. Since one pound of body fat is roughly 3,500 kcal, a 500 kcal/day deficit works out to about one pound of weight change per week.
Limitations of this estimate
TDEE and BMR formulas are population averages — actual metabolism varies with genetics, muscle mass, hormones, and other factors, so treat the result as a starting estimate to adjust from based on real-world progress, not a fixed number. This is a general estimate, not medical advice — see the Disclaimer for details, and check the BMI Calculator for another quick reference point.