TDEE Calculator
Result
Total daily energy expenditure
- Basal metabolic rate
- 1,649 kcal
- Burn above rest
- 907 kcal
- Total daily energy expenditure (kJ)
- 10,694 kJ
Total daily energy expenditure is everything you burn per day: the resting rate, plus digestion, plus every step and every workout. This calculator takes that resting rate from your body measurements and scales it by how active you are. It prints the resting figure and the activity factor beside the total, so the arithmetic can be checked by hand, and it shows what each of the five activity levels does to the same reference person. The result is a quantity rather than a prescription — nothing here says whether it is the number you want.
Daily energy expenditure at each activity level, for a 175 cm, 70 kg, 30-year-old man
| Activity level | Activity factor | TDEE (kcal) |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | 1.2 | 1979 |
| Light | 1.375 | 2267 |
| Moderate | 1.55 | 2556 |
| Active | 1.725 | 2844 |
| Very active | 1.9 | 3133 |
One equation read at five multipliers — the resting rate behind every row is the same 1649 kcal, so the only thing changing down the column is the factor. The moderate row reproduces the default result above. The factors themselves are a convention rather than a published standard; the limitations below say what the FAO/WHO/UNU report gives instead.
Formula
TDEE (kcal/day) = BMR × activity factor
- BMR
- Basal metabolic rate from sex, age, height and weight (kcal)
- activity factor
- Multiplier carried by the activity level you pick
Use it when you want to know what your day costs before deciding what to eat. This page answers the burn side only, so there is no weight goal among its inputs — for a target that already subtracts a deficit or adds a surplus, use the calorie calculator. To see what one specific activity accounts for on its own, the calories burned calculator works from MET values instead.
Worked examples
A 30-year-old man, 175 cm and 70 kg, moderately active
- BMR: 10 × 70 + 6.25 × 175 − 5 × 30 + 5 = 1648.75 kcal
- Moderately active carries a factor of 1.55
- 1648.75 × 1.55 = 2555.5625, rounded to 2556 kcal
- Above rest: 2556 − 1648.75 = 907 kcal
- In kilojoules: 2556 × 4.184 = 10694 kJ
The 907 kcal is not the exercise. It is everything above the resting rate — digestion, walking to the bus, fidgeting and training together — and training is usually the smallest part of it. Reading that row as time spent in the gym is the most common way this page is misread.
A 35-year-old woman, 165 cm and 60 kg, lightly active
- BMR: 10 × 60 + 6.25 × 165 − 5 × 35 − 161 = 1295.25 kcal
- Lightly active carries a factor of 1.375
- 1295.25 × 1.375 = 1780.96875, rounded to 1781 kcal
- Above rest: 1781 − 1295.25 = 486 kcal
- In kilojoules: 1781 × 4.184 = 7452 kJ
Moving one step down the ladder to sedentary would cost about 227 kcal a day, and one step up to active would add about 453. The multipliers are not evenly spaced, so the same jump in lifestyle costs different amounts depending on where you start.
Limitations
The activity factors are a widely used convention, not a published standard. The FAO/WHO/UNU report frames activity as a physical activity level and gives its own bands — 1.40 to 1.69 for a sedentary or light-activity lifestyle, 1.70 to 1.99 for an active or moderately active one, and 2.00 to 2.40 for a vigorously active one. Those do not line up with the 1.2 to 1.9 ladder used here: FAO's scale starts at 1.40, it has no counterpart to the 1.2 rung at all, and 1.55 sits inside its second band rather than on a rung of its own. The ladder is the one most calculators share, and it is used consistently across the pages on this site, but choosing a level is a judgment about your own week rather than a measurement of it. Pregnancy, illness, recovery from injury and some medications all move expenditure outside these multipliers.
Frequently asked questions
- What is TDEE?
- Total daily energy expenditure — every kilocalorie you spend in 24 hours. It is the resting rate scaled by an activity factor, which folds in digestion, deliberate exercise and all the incidental movement of a day. It is the number your intake has to match if your weight is to stay where it is.
- How do I pick my activity level?
- By your average week, not your best one. A desk job with three workouts a week is lightly active; three to five sessions is moderately active; six or seven is active; and very active is for a physical job or two sessions a day. The common mistake runs one notch high — the level already carries an allowance for exercise, so adding a workout on top of a level that assumes it double-counts.
- Do I need TDEE to lose weight?
- You need it as a starting point, not as a target. It tells you roughly where maintenance sits, and a deficit of 500 to 750 kilocalories a day under it is the usual shape of a weight-loss plan. What you actually eat and what the scale does over two or three weeks is better information than the estimate, because the estimate is a group average wearing your measurements.
- Is TDEE the same every day?
- No, and it moves in both directions. A long training day runs above the estimate and a rest day below it, which is why the figure is best read as a weekly average. It also drifts down over months of dieting: a lighter body costs less to run, and a body in a deficit trims some of its own spending on top of that. Recalculating every few kilograms is more honest than holding one number for a whole diet.
- Why is this different from what my watch says?
- Because they are measuring different things. A watch estimates the burn of the activity it can see — heart rate, steps, motion — and its error on any single session is large. This page estimates the whole day from your body size and a stated activity level. The two will not agree, and neither is a measurement; the watch is at its most reliable for steady cardio and at its least for strength work and intervals.
References
- A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals — Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al. — American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990
- Human energy requirements: report of a joint FAO/WHO/UNU expert consultation — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations