TDEE Calculator: Free Maintenance Calories in 20 Seconds

What Is TDEE?

TDEE, or total daily energy expenditure, is the number of calories your body uses in a day, including resting metabolism, movement and exercise, and digesting food. Eating around your TDEE keeps weight roughly steady, so it’s also called your maintenance calories. Calculators estimate it from your age, sex, height, weight and activity level.

Nobody can read TDEE off a scale. Measuring it directly takes lab equipment, so every TDEE calculator, this one included, gives an estimate. That makes TDEE a planning tool: a sensible baseline for deciding whether to eat less, the same or more.

What Makes Up Your TDEE?

Three parts add up to your daily burn. The shares below are approximate and shift with how active you are.

• Basal metabolic rate (BMR), roughly 60 to 70%. The energy your body spends keeping you alive at rest: breathing, circulating blood, repairing cells. It depends mostly on body size and lean mass, along with age and sex.
• Physical activity, roughly 15 to 30%. Planned exercise plus everything else you do on your feet, such as walking, standing, chores and fidgeting. That second group is called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT. It differs a lot from person to person, which is why activity is the least predictable part.
• Thermic effect of food (TEF), roughly 10%. The energy used to digest, absorb and process what you eat. The cost depends on the nutrient: roughly 20 to 30% of protein’s calories, 5 to 10% of carbohydrate’s and 0 to 3% of fat’s (Halton and Hu, 2004).

How This TDEE Calculator Works

The calculation has two steps, plus an optional third.

Step 1: estimate your BMR. The calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, with weight in kilograms and height in centimeters:

• Men: BMR = (10 × weight) + (6.25 × height) − (5 × age) + 5
• Women: BMR = (10 × weight) + (6.25 × height) − (5 × age) − 161

Step 2: multiply by an activity factor.

Step 3 (optional): use body fat. If you enter body fat %, the calculator switches to the Katch-McArdle equation, which uses lean body mass instead of height, age and sex:

• Lean body mass (kg) = weight × (1 − body fat % ÷ 100)
• BMR = 370 + (21.6 × lean body mass)

Worked example

A 35-year-old woman who is 165 cm (5’5”) tall, weighs 68 kg (150 lb) and trains three to five days a week:

• BMR = (10 × 68) + (6.25 × 165) − (5 × 35) − 161 = 1,375 calories
• TDEE = 1,375 × 1.55 = about 2,130 calories a day

If she knew she had 30% body fat, her lean mass would be 47.6 kg and the Katch-McArdle BMR would be 370 + (21.6 × 47.6) = about 1,398 calories, a TDEE of roughly 2,170. The two methods land close together here. They can differ more for people who are very lean or very muscular.

How much does one activity level matter?

Here is the same woman at each activity level:

Each step up adds about 240 calories a day. Picking the wrong level by one step is enough to wipe out roughly half a pound of expected weekly loss, because 240 calories a day is about 1,680 a week. If your result seems too generous, the activity level is the first input to question.

BMR vs TDEE: What’s the Difference?

Your BMR is what you’d burn lying still all day. Your TDEE adds movement and digestion on top. With the five activity factors above, TDEE comes out 20% to 90% higher than BMR. BMR is the floor and TDEE is the number to plan around. Eating at your BMR all day, with no allowance for living, is a common mistake. For a related comparison, see our guide to BMR and BMI.

How Accurate Is a TDEE Calculator?

Less accurate than the single number suggests. There are two layers of error.

The BMR equation. A 2005 systematic review in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association (Frankenfield and colleagues) found that Mifflin-St Jeor predicted resting metabolic rate within 10% of the measured value in more people than the other common equations, and had the narrowest error range. The same review warned of “noteworthy errors” for individuals, and noted that older adults and some ethnic groups were underrepresented in the studies. Later studies show how big the individual error can be: in one study of women, Mifflin-St Jeor landed within 10% about 71% of the time, and in a 2024 study of overweight and obese adults, about 50% of estimates were within 10%.

The activity factor. These studies tested resting metabolism, not total daily burn. Multiplying by an activity factor adds a second layer of guesswork, because the factors are broad categories and real people don’t sit neatly in them.

That’s why this calculator shows a likely range of about 10% either side of your result. The range is an illustration of typical error, not a guarantee. Some people will fall outside it.

How to Use Your TDEE for Weight Loss, Maintenance or Gain

Maintenance. Eating around your TDEE tends to hold weight steady. Check it over two to three weeks of consistent eating.

Weight loss. Eat below your TDEE. A shortcut many people use is that a 500-calorie daily deficit leads to about a pound lost per week, and 250 calories to about half a pound. It’s a rough guide: weight loss usually slows as your body gets smaller, and the NIH’s Body Weight Planner models that more realistically. Harvard Health describes 500 to 1,000 calories below maintenance as a rate experts consider safe for 1 to 2 pounds a week, and says intake shouldn’t fall below 1,200 a day for women or 1,500 for men without a health professional’s supervision. This calculator warns you if a target drops below those floors, and a gentler deficit is often easier to stick with.

Muscle gain. Eat slightly above your TDEE. A small surplus, around 200 to 300 calories a day, is a common starting point. Larger surpluses tend to add more fat than muscle. Our guide to macros for a clean bulk covers the next step.

Don’t add exercise calories on top. Your activity factor already accounts for your typical training week. Adding the calories your watch reports for each workout counts the same effort twice. Watches also tend to show gross calories, which include the energy you’d have burned anyway. For the difference, see net calories.

If you want a plan built around your result, MyFitnessCoach has a personalized diet plan feature.

Common Mistakes That Throw Off Your TDEE

• Picking an activity level that fits your best week. Choose the level that matches a typical week, including the quiet ones.
• Counting exercise twice. See above.
• Using BMR as a daily target. BMR leaves no room for movement or digestion.
• Treating the number as fixed. TDEE falls as you lose weight. As a rule of thumb, recalculate after every 10 pounds or so of change, or every six to eight weeks.
• Judging by one day’s weight. Daily readings move with water and food. Compare weekly averages instead.
• Forgetting the small stuff when tracking. Cooking oil, drinks and weekend meals are easy to miss and can explain why the math and the scale disagree.

How to Check Your Estimate

Your own data beats a formula. This takes two to three weeks:

1. Eat at your calculated TDEE, tracking your food as accurately as you can.
2. Weigh yourself at the same time each day and look at the weekly average.
3. If the average stays roughly flat, your estimate is close. If it drifts up or down, adjust by 100 to 200 calories a day and test again.

If your weight stalls during a long diet, a planned diet break at maintenance is one option. To check whether you’re really in a deficit, see how to know if you’re in a calorie deficit.

How to Raise Your TDEE

You can change some parts of the total, but the effects are modest.

• Move more outside workouts. Walking, standing and chores add up, and NEAT is the most variable part of TDEE. See how many steps to lose weight for the calorie math.
• Build muscle. Lean mass raises your resting burn a little, and it helps protect muscle during a diet.
• Eat enough protein. Protein costs the most calories to digest, though TEF is only about a tenth of your day, so don’t expect a big effect.

Who This Calculator May Not Fit Well

It’s built for healthy adults. Estimates are less reliable for people who are pregnant or breastfeeding, very muscular, older adults, or living with a medical condition that affects metabolism, and it isn’t meant for children or teens. If any of these apply, talk to a doctor or registered dietitian about your calorie needs.

About This Calculator

This calculator gives a general estimate for healthy adults. It’s not medical advice, and it doesn’t diagnose or treat any condition. Talk with a qualified healthcare professional about your own calorie needs, especially if you have a health condition, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or plan to eat well below your maintenance level. Nothing you enter is stored or sent.

Built by MyFitnessCoach, an AI-driven fitness app with workout plans, nutrition guidance and health tracking.

Last updated: October 2026