BodyCalWhat this TDEE calculator does
Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)is the number of calories your body burns in a full day. It's the foundation of any nutrition plan: eat below it to lose weight, at it to maintain, or above it to gain. This calculator estimates your TDEE from your body stats and activity level, and shows how that number changes across every activity level so you can see exactly what movement is worth.
The two numbers that make up your TDEE
- BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate):the calories you burn just staying alive — breathing, circulating blood, keeping your organs running. It's usually 60–70% of your total burn, calculated here with the well-validated Mifflin–St Jeor equation.
- Activity: everything on top of BMR — walking, working, training, even fidgeting — plus the small energy cost of digesting food. We apply an activity multiplier from 1.2 (sedentary) to 1.9 (very active) to your BMR to reach your TDEE.
Choosing the right activity level
This is where most people go wrong, so be honest. "Sedentary" means a desk job with little exercise. "Light" is exercise 1–3 days a week; "Moderate" 3–5 days; "Active" 6–7 days; "Very active" is hard daily training or a physically demanding job. Overestimating your activity is the most common reason a plan stalls, because it inflates your calorie target.
How to use your TDEE
Once you know your maintenance number, subtract for fat loss (around 500 calories a day for steady progress), keep it the same to maintain, or add a small surplus to build muscle. Then split those calories into protein, carbs, and fat with our macro calculator, and map your timeline with the calorie deficit calculator. Recalculate every few weeks — as your weight changes, so does your TDEE.