TDEE Calculator
What you actually burn in a day, resting plus moving. Every activity level is listed, because overestimating that multiplier is the single most common reason a diet stalls.
How the math works
TDEE = BMR x activity multiplier. BMR comes from Mifflin-St Jeor: 10 x kg + 6.25 x cm - 5 x age, then +5 for men and -161 for women. The multipliers run from 1.2 for sedentary to 1.9 for an athlete. Each step is about 0.175, which on a typical BMR is close to 300 calories a day.
Common questions
- What is TDEE?
- Total daily energy expenditure: everything you burn in 24 hours. Eat that much and your weight holds. Eat less and you lose, eat more and you gain. It is the single most useful number in any diet.
- Which activity level should I pick?
- Almost certainly one lower than you think. Gym sessions three times a week with a desk job is light to moderate, not very active. If your weight is not moving the way this page predicts after three weeks, your real multiplier is lower.
- How accurate is this?
- Within about 10 percent for most people, which on 2,500 calories is 250 either way. Use it as a starting point, then adjust from what the scale actually does over two or three weeks.
- Does exercise count twice?
- It should not. The multiplier already includes your training, so adding calories burned from a workout tracker on top double counts them. Fitness trackers are also known to overstate calorie burn considerably.
- Why did my TDEE fall when I lost weight?
- Because a smaller body costs less to run and to move. Losing 20 pounds typically drops TDEE by 150 to 250 calories a day, which is why a deficit that worked at the start stops working later.