TDEE Calculator
Enter your details and activity level and this works out roughly how many calories a day you burn — the number to eat around to stay the same, and what to aim for to lose or gain.
Maintenance calories
2,759a day
- Maintenance
- 2,759 cal
- To lose weight
- 2,259 cal
- To gain weight
- 3,259 cal
- BMR (Mifflin)
- 1,780 cal
- BMR (Harris)
- 1,854 cal
- Protein at 30%
- 207 g
- Carbs at 40%
- 276 g
- Fat at 30%
- 92 g
- Two formulas are shown because both are in wide use and they disagree. Mifflin-St Jeor is the modern default and generally the closer of the two; Harris-Benedict is older and usually reads a little higher.
- A deficit or surplus of 500 calories a day is the conventional starting point for losing or gaining roughly a pound a week. It is a rule of thumb rather than a law.
- Activity multipliers are broad estimates. If your weight is not moving as expected after a few weeks, the multiplier is the number to adjust.
About the TDEE calculator
Total daily energy expenditure is what you burn in a day, all in. It starts with your basal metabolic rate — what you would burn lying still for twenty-four hours, which is most of the total — and multiplies it by how active you are on top of that.
Two BMR formulas are shown because both are in wide use and they disagree by a hundred calories or more. Mifflin-St Jeor dates from 1990 and is generally the more accurate of the two; Harris-Benedict is from 1919, revised in 1984, and usually reads higher. Neither is wrong, and seeing the gap is more honest than presenting one figure with false confidence.
The activity multiplier is the weakest link. It is a broad band covering everything from a desk job to manual labour, and people routinely overestimate where they sit. If your weight is not moving the way this predicts after two or three weeks, the multiplier is what to adjust — not the formula.
What it works out
- Maintenance calories for your activity level
- Targets for losing or gaining weight
- BMR by both Mifflin-St Jeor and Harris-Benedict
- A protein, carbohydrate and fat split
The formula
BMR = 10w + 6.25h − 5a + s TDEE = BMR × activity
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation takes weight in kilograms, height in centimetres and age in years, then adds 5 for men or subtracts 161 for women. For an eighty kilogram, hundred-and- eighty centimetre thirty-year-old man that is 800 plus 1125 minus 150 plus 5, which is 1780 calories a day at complete rest.
The activity multiplier turns that into a daily total. Sedentary is 1.2, light activity 1.375, moderate 1.55, active 1.725 and very active 1.9. At moderate, that 1780 becomes about 2759 calories.
Losing or gaining is then a deficit or surplus against that figure. Five hundred calories a day is the conventional starting point, on the rule of thumb that a pound of fat is roughly 3,500 calories — so 500 a day is about a pound a week. It is a useful approximation rather than a physical law, and the body adapts as weight changes.
- w
- Weight in kilograms.
- h
- Height in centimetres.
- a
- Age in years.
- s
- A constant: +5 for men, −161 for women.
- Activity
- A multiplier from 1.2 for sedentary up to 1.9 for very active.
A worked example
A thirty-year-old man, eighty kilograms, a hundred and eighty centimetres, training three to five days a week.
That works out to 2,759 a day.
- Maintenance
- 2,759 cal
- To lose weight
- 2,259 cal
- To gain weight
- 3,259 cal
- BMR (Mifflin)
- 1,780 cal
- BMR (Harris)
- 1,854 cal
- Protein at 30%
- 207 g
- Carbs at 40%
- 276 g
- Fat at 30%
- 92 g
Questions
How many calories should I eat to lose weight?
About 500 a day below your maintenance figure, which works out to roughly a pound a week. Going much steeper tends to cost muscle as well as fat and gets harder to sustain, which is usually where diets fail.
Why do the two BMR formulas disagree?
They were derived from different populations decades apart. Harris-Benedict dates from 1919 and generally reads higher; Mifflin-St Jeor from 1990 is usually closer for modern populations. The gap of a hundred calories or so is real and worth seeing rather than hiding.
What activity level should I choose?
Most people overestimate. Sedentary means a desk job and no regular training. Moderate means genuinely training three to five days a week. If you are unsure, pick the lower one and adjust after a few weeks of tracking your weight.
Is TDEE accurate?
It is an estimate with a real margin — individual metabolisms vary by a couple of hundred calories either way from any formula. Use it as a starting point, then adjust based on what your weight actually does over two or three weeks.
What are macros and do they matter?
Protein, carbohydrate and fat. Protein and carbs carry four calories a gram and fat nine. Total calories drive weight change; the split matters more for training, satiety and holding onto muscle while losing fat.
How much protein should I eat?
Commonly cited ranges run from about 1.2 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight depending on how much you train. The 30% default here lands in that range for most people at typical calorie levels.