TDEE Calculator: Maintenance Calories and Calories to Lose Weight
Free TDEE calculator: find your total daily energy expenditure (maintenance calories) from your age, sex, weight, height and activity, then see the calories to lose, maintain or gain weight, with a what-if slider and week-by-week projection.
Mix units freely: type weight in kg or lb and height in cm or ft + in; the other fields fill in as you type.
Know your body-fat %? (optional, unlocks Katch-McArdle and Cunningham)
Do not know it? Estimate your body fat with a tape measure.
Where your energy goes
Estimates: digesting food is taken as about 10% of your total, and the organ shares are typical resting figures (Elia, 1992), not measurements of you.
Calories to lose, maintain or gain
What if I eat…? Try your own calories
Weekly steps use 7,700 kcal per kg and recalculate your maintenance as your weight changes, so a fixed deficit slows down over time, as it does in real life. It ignores water weight, muscle changes and individual metabolism.
Compare the equations
They usually agree within about 5-10%. Pick one and stick with it, then adjust from how your weight actually changes over 2-3 weeks.
Calories at every activity level
Your BMR through life
The same weight and height at every age. Resting burn drifts down with age (about 5 kcal a day per year with Mifflin-St Jeor), mostly because of lost muscle, so keeping muscle matters.
What is TDEE (total daily energy expenditure)?
Your TDEE is the total number of calories you burn in a day: your resting burn (BMR), plus the energy to digest food, plus everything you do, from walking to the gym. Eat about your TDEE and your weight stays steady; eat less and you lose weight; eat more and you gain. It is also called your maintenance calories.
How this TDEE calculator works
It calculates your BMR from your age, sex, weight and height, then multiplies by an activity factor: TDEE = BMR × activity multiplier. The default equation is Mifflin-St Jeor; you can switch to Harris-Benedict, or to Katch-McArdle or Cunningham if you know your body-fat %.
Example: a 30-year-old man at 80 kg and 180 cm has a BMR of 1,780 kcal. Moderately active (×1.55), his TDEE is about 2,759 kcal a day. To lose about 0.5 kg a week he would eat roughly 2,209 kcal (a 550 kcal deficit).
Which activity level should I pick?
Most people overestimate. Count only deliberate exercise, and choose the lower level if you are between two. A desk job with three workouts a week is usually lightly active. You can then check the estimate against your weight: if you hold the same weight for 2–3 weeks on your TDEE in calories, it is right; if not, adjust by 100–200 kcal.
Using your TDEE to lose or gain weight
About 7,700 kcal is one kilogram of body weight (3,500 per pound), so a 500 kcal daily deficit loses roughly 0.5 kg (1 lb) a week. The calculator shows each target, flags any that fall below your BMR or the usual 1,200 (women) and 1,500 (men) minimums, and the “What if I eat…?” slider projects your weight week by week, including how the rate slows as your weight drops.
Questions
- What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?
- BMR is what you burn at complete rest; TDEE is your whole day including movement. TDEE is the number to eat by.
- Is TDEE accurate?
- It is an estimate, usually within 10% for healthy adults. Track your weight for a few weeks and adjust.
- Should I eat back my exercise calories?
- Not if your activity level already includes that exercise. Choose the level that matches your usual week and keep the calories steady.
- Is my data private?
- Yes. Everything stays in this browser.
General information, not medical advice. Related: Macro Calculator · Body Fat Calculator · Water Intake Calculator · BMI Calculator