TDEE Calculator
Find your Total Daily Energy Expenditure — the number of calories you burn per day including activity. Enter your details below to get your BMR, maintenance calories, and targets for weight loss or muscle gain. Everything is calculated instantly in your browser; nothing is stored or sent anywhere.
How to Use This Tool — Q&A
What is TDEE?
TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is the total number of calories your body burns in a day, including your basal metabolic rate (BMR) plus calories burned through daily movement, exercise, and digestion. It's the number you use as a baseline for losing, maintaining, or gaining weight.
How is TDEE different from BMR?
BMR is the energy your body needs at complete rest just to keep your organs running. TDEE takes that number and multiplies it by an activity factor to account for the calories you burn moving around, exercising, and doing daily tasks. TDEE is always higher than BMR unless you're completely sedentary.
Which formula should I use — Mifflin-St Jeor or Harris-Benedict?
Mifflin-St Jeor is the formula most dietitians and sports scientists recommend today; multiple validation studies have found it more accurate for most adults than the older Harris-Benedict equation. Harris-Benedict (revised 1984 version) is included here for comparison, but Mifflin-St Jeor is the better default choice.
Why do the calculations differ for men and women?
At the same age, height, and weight, men typically carry more lean muscle mass than women, which burns more calories at rest. Both the Mifflin-St Jeor and Harris-Benedict equations include a separate constant for each sex to account for this difference — using the correct one for your sex matters for accuracy.
How many calories should I eat to lose weight?
A moderate, sustainable deficit is typically 500 calories/day below your TDEE, which targets roughly 0.5 kg (1 lb) of fat loss per week. Larger deficits speed up short-term loss but are harder to sustain and can increase muscle loss — this tool shows mild, moderate, and aggressive options so you can choose what's realistic for you.
Is this calculator accurate?
These formulas are population-based estimates with a typical margin of error of around 10%, since they can't account for individual differences like muscle mass, genetics, or metabolic health conditions. Use your result as a starting point, then adjust up or down every 2-3 weeks based on how your actual weight trend responds.