TDEE Calculator

What is TDEE?

Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is an estimate of all the calories your body uses in a day: resting metabolism plus everything you burn walking, working, training, and digesting food. Because it reflects a whole day rather than a resting state, TDEE is the number most people mean when they talk about maintenance calories: roughly what you would eat to hold your current weight.

How is TDEE calculated?

FitQuota estimates your resting metabolism with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then scales it by a standard activity factor. The calculator runs three steps in order, using the values you entered above.

1. 1. Convert your measurements to metric

   weight in kg = lb × 0.453592, and height in cm = (ft × 30.48) + (in × 2.54)

2. 2. Estimate BMR (Mifflin-St Jeor)

   BMR = (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) − (5 × age) + 5 for men, or − 161 for women

3. 3. Scale BMR by your activity level

   TDEE = BMR × activity multiplier

Step 2 is the only place sex enters the calculation, and it is worth a moment because the size of it surprises people. The gap between the two versions of the equation is 166 kcal at rest, which is less than moving one step up the activity scale costs you. There is more on what that means, and what the menstrual cycle does and does not change, in is TDEE different for women.

What makes up your TDEE?

Total daily energy expenditure is four things added together. Basal metabolic rate is the energy you use at complete rest. The thermic effect of food is the cost of digesting and processing what you eat. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, usually shortened to NEAT, is everything you do that is not deliberate exercise: walking around, standing, fidgeting, household tasks. Exercise activity is the training itself.

Resting metabolism is the largest share for most people. For a moderately active 32-year-old man of 175 cm and 70 kg, this calculator puts BMR at 1,639 kcal of a 2,540 kcal total, about 65%. The same person is 83% BMR if sedentary and 53% if extra active, because the resting figure stays put while everything above it grows.

The thermic effect of food is the most predictable of the rest. On a mixed diet eaten at energy balance it accounts for roughly 5 to 15% of daily energy expenditure, which for that same person is about 127 to 381 kcal.

NEAT is the least predictable, and it is where people differ most. It explains the large majority of an individual’s non-resting energy needs, far more than formal exercise does for most people. In one study, people with obesity sat for about two hours longer each day than lean people, a difference estimated at around 350 kcal a day.

This is the real reason the activity question matters so much. A TDEE calculator does not measure the thermic effect of food, NEAT and exercise separately. It rolls all three into a single multiplier, so choosing an activity level is really a guess at how much you move across the whole day, not only how often you train. If that choice is the hard part, the guide to picking your activity level works through it.

Can I use my step count instead of an activity level?

Yes, and for most people it is the better input. Almost nobody can say honestly whether they are “moderately active”, but almost everybody’s phone knows how many steps they took. Enter it in the activity step above and the calculator suggests a level.

Two things to be straight about. The middle column is published: Tudor-Locke and Bassett proposed those bands for healthy adults in 2004. The right column is not. No study maps step counts onto Mifflin-St Jeor multipliers, because the two were developed separately and measure different things, so the suggestion is an approximation and the calculator leaves the final choice to you.

And a step count misses everything that is not walking. Cycling, swimming and a heavy lifting session all register as almost nothing, so if you train as well as walk, take the suggestion and go up one level. Picking your activity level works through the harder cases.

How do I calculate my TDEE by hand?

Two multiplications and some addition. Take a 30-year-old man of 180 cm and 80 kg who trains three times a week.

First, resting metabolism. Multiply weight by 10, height by 6.25 and age by 5, then add the two and subtract the third, and add 5 because he is male:

(10 × 80) + (6.25 × 180) − (5 × 30) + 5 = 800 + 1,125 − 150 + 5 = 1,780 kcal

Second, the activity factor. Three sessions a week is lightly active, which is 1.375:

1,780 × 1.375 = 2,448 kcal

That is his TDEE. A woman of the same age, height and weight would subtract 161 instead of adding 5, giving 1,614 kcal at rest and 2,219 for the day. Working in pounds and feet, convert first: weight in kg is pounds × 0.453592, and height in cm is (feet × 30.48) + (inches × 2.54). The calculator above accepts either and does the conversion for you.

What is a typical TDEE?

There is no single figure, because weight, height, age and activity all move it. As a rough range, moderately active adults land somewhere between 2,000 and 2,800 kcal, and the same people sitting at a desk all day land 400 to 700 kcal lower. These six come from the calculator above:

Read across rather than down. The 25-year-old man swings 948 kcal between sedentary and very active, which is more than the gap between him and the 45-year-old woman at the same activity level. Your answer is decided more by how you spend the day than by who you are.

What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?

BMR is the floor and TDEE is the whole day. Basal Metabolic Rate counts only the energy needed to keep you alive at complete rest, covering breathing, circulation, and cell repair. TDEE takes that same number and adds the cost of moving through your day. TDEE is therefore always the larger of the two, typically between 20% and 90% higher depending on how active you are. If you want the resting figure on its own, use the BMR Calculator.

How activity level affects TDEE

Activity level is the single biggest lever in this calculation. Moving from sedentary to extra active multiplies the same resting metabolism by 1.9 instead of 1.2, a difference of well over 500 kcal a day for most people. When two levels feel equally true, the lower one is usually the safer estimate, since it is easy to overstate how much of a week is genuinely active.

How accurate is a TDEE estimate?

Treat the result as a starting point, not a measurement. Prediction equations like Mifflin-St Jeor are fitted to population averages, so an individual estimate can sit some way either side of the true value. Body composition, genetics, sleep, stress, medication, and the accuracy of your own activity estimate all move the real number. The practical approach is to eat near the estimate for two to three weeks, track how your weight trends, and adjust from what actually happens rather than from the formula.

Of the two choices behind any TDEE figure, the activity level matters far more than the equation. Running one person through four published BMR equations moves the result by 170 kcal. Running the same person through the five activity multipliers moves it by 1,147. The full comparison, with every figure reproducible, is in how much calorie calculators actually disagree.