TDEE and Calorie Calculator

TDEE and Calorie Calculator

Your total daily energy expenditure: the calories you burn in a full day, estimated from the published equations researchers actually use. You get your BMR (what your body burns at complete rest), your TDEE at five activity levels so you can see how much the activity choice moves the answer, a calorie target for maintaining, reducing or increasing intake, and a macro breakdown of that target. Three BMR formulas are offered, including Katch-McArdle if you know your body fat percentage. These are estimates, population averages applied to your numbers, and the page treats them that way: a starting point to test against your own tracking, never a measurement.

Disclaimer: This calculator gives estimates for general information only. It is not medical advice. Calorie equations are population averages, and your real expenditure can differ from them. Talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before making significant changes to your intake, and do not use these figures if you are under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding, or living with a medical condition or a history of eating disorders.

What this calculator does

Every calorie target anyone has ever given you rests on two numbers: what your body burns doing nothing, and what your life adds on top. The first is BMR, basal metabolic rate, estimated here by the equations published for exactly that purpose. The second is TDEE, total daily energy expenditure, your BMR scaled by an activity multiplier. This calculator shows both, shows the TDEE at every activity level rather than only the one you picked, because that spread is the most honest thing on the page, and then turns maintenance into a goal intake and a macro breakdown. It offers the three standard equations and tells you which to use: Mifflin-St Jeor for most people, revised Harris-Benedict as the older alternative, Katch-McArdle if you genuinely know your body fat percentage, because that one builds from lean mass instead of total weight.

How to use it

  1. Pick the activity level below your ego, not at it. The multiplier is the biggest single lever in the whole calculation: on the worked example below, the same body ranges from 2,136 to 3,382 kcal a day purely on this choice. The levels describe your whole week, job included, not your best training day. A desk worker who trains four times a week is usually "lightly" or "moderately" active overall, and choosing "very active" is the most common reason a calculated target overshoots.
  2. Use Mifflin-St Jeor unless you have a reason not to. In validation studies it predicts measured BMR within about 10% for the largest share of adults, which is why it is the default here and the equation the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found most reliable for general use. Harris-Benedict tends to read a little higher, as the worked examples show. Katch-McArdle is the better tool only when the body fat figure fed into it is real, from a DXA scan or a careful measurement; a guessed body fat percentage makes it worse, not better.
  3. Treat the goal as a test, not a verdict. The deficit and surplus options are percentages of maintenance, deliberately: 20% below a 2,759 maintenance is a serious cut, while the same percentage of a small maintenance is modest, and fixed numbers like "eat 500 less" ignore that entirely. Whichever target you take, the method professionals use is to hold it for two to three weeks, watch the trend of daily weigh-ins averaged weekly, and adjust by 100 to 200 kcal based on what actually happens. Your tracked response outranks any equation, including these.
  4. Recalculate when your weight changes. BMR follows weight, so a target set at 90 kg is stale at 80 kg. A useful rhythm is to rerun your numbers after every 4 to 5 kg of change, and whenever your routine changes materially: a new job, a training block, an injury layoff.
  5. The macro table is a starting split, not a prescription. Balanced, higher-protein and lower-carb splits are shown for the same calories so you can see that the grams, not the label, are what change. The Macro Calculator on this site goes deeper on protein targets by goal; this page keeps the overview.

How it is calculated

Mifflin-St Jeor: for men, BMR = 10 x weight in kg + 6.25 x height in cm - 5 x age + 5; for women, the same with -161 instead of +5. Revised Harris-Benedict: men, 88.362 + 13.397 x kg + 4.799 x cm - 5.677 x age; women, 447.593 + 9.247 x kg + 3.098 x cm - 4.330 x age. Katch-McArdle: BMR = 370 + 21.6 x lean body mass in kg, where lean mass is weight x (1 - body fat fraction). TDEE = BMR x the activity multiplier (1.2, 1.375, 1.55, 1.725, 1.9). Goal intake = TDEE x the goal factor. Macros use 4 kcal per gram of protein and carbohydrate and 9 per gram of fat. Imperial entries are converted at 1 lb = 0.45359237 kg and 1 inch = 2.54 cm before the same equations run.

Worked examples

The reference case: a man, 30, 80 kg, 180 cm, moderately active. Mifflin-St Jeor: 800 + 1,125 - 150 + 5 = BMR 1,780. At x1.55, TDEE 2,759 kcal a day, 19,313 a week. The activity table around him runs 2,136 sedentary to 3,382 at athlete level: the spread is 1,246 kcal, larger than most diet adjustments anyone will ever make, which is why the activity choice deserves more care than the formula choice. His balanced macro split at maintenance is protein 207 g, fat 92 g, carbs 276 g. His BMI is 24.7.

A smaller, older, lighter case: a woman, 45, 65 kg, 165 cm, lightly active. BMR = 650 + 1,031.25 - 225 - 161 = 1,295; TDEE at x1.375 is 1,781. Note the decimal: her unrounded BMR is 1,295.25, and this page rounds the BMR once, then multiplies, so the figure you see is the figure that was used, all the way down.

Same man, three formulas: Mifflin gives 1,780. Revised Harris-Benedict gives 1,854, about 4% higher, its known tendency. Katch-McArdle at a measured 20% body fat gives lean mass of 64 kg and a BMR of 1,752, slightly below Mifflin. Three respectable equations, a spread of about 100 kcal: that is the true precision of this science, and any tool promising you a single exact number is overselling it.

The caution case: a woman, 25, 50 kg, 150 cm, sedentary: BMR 1,152, maintenance 1,382. A 20% deficit works out at 1,106 kcal, below the 1,200 commonly used minimum for adults, and the page flags it with a caution and suggests the mild deficit and professional guidance instead. Small bodies have small maintenances, and percentage deficits do not know that; the floor check exists for exactly this case.

Reading your result

Your TDEE is the centre of a range, not a point. Validation work on these equations finds most individuals within roughly 10% either side, which on a 2,759 maintenance is about 275 kcal of honest uncertainty. That is not a failure of the tool; it is the nature of predicting a person from population data, and it is why the correct way to use the number is as the opening bid in a two to three week self-test. If weight is stable at a target meant to reduce it, the target was your maintenance whatever the equation said, and the adjustment is small and mechanical. What the equation gives you is a far better starting point than a guess, a consistent way to adjust, and numbers that move correctly as your weight and activity change.

Limitations

  • Not for children, pregnancy or breastfeeding. These are adult equations. Energy needs in pregnancy and adolescence follow clinical guidance, not multipliers, and this page declines those cases in its errors and its disclaimer rather than producing a number anyway.
  • Estimates, with real individual variation. Two people of identical age, sex, weight and height can differ measurably in resting expenditure through organ mass, thyroid function, medication, and prior dieting history. No input on this page can see those, which is another reason the tracked response governs.
  • Activity multipliers are averages from an older literature. They compress all non-exercise movement, the fidgeting, standing and walking that researchers call NEAT, into one band per level, and NEAT varies hugely between jobs and people. Wearable devices have their own errors and are not obviously better; consistency of method matters more than the device.
  • Body fat inputs are only as good as their source. Scales that estimate body fat by impedance can be off by several points either way, and Katch-McArdle multiplies that error straight into the BMR. Use it with a trustworthy measurement or not at all.
  • Nothing here is a weight promise. The page gives energy arithmetic. How a body responds over months involves appetite, adherence, sleep, medication and adaptation that no calculator on this site will pretend to forecast.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?

BMR is the energy your body spends at complete rest, keeping you warm, breathing, circulating blood and running your organs; for most people it is the majority of the day's burn. TDEE is BMR plus everything else: moving, working, training, digesting. You plan eating against TDEE, never against BMR, and eating below BMR is not a requirement of any deficit; maintenance minus a percentage is the whole method, which the goal options apply for you.

Which formula should I use?

Mifflin-St Jeor, unless you have a measured body fat percentage you trust, in which case Katch-McArdle is at least as good and arguably better for people at the extremes of muscularity or body fat, because it prices lean tissue rather than total mass. Harris-Benedict is included for comparison and because older professional materials still quote it; expect it to read slightly high. If the three disagree, the spread itself is information: plan from the middle and adjust by tracking.

How accurate is a TDEE calculator?

For groups, very; for an individual, within about 10% for most people when the activity level is chosen honestly. The dominant error is rarely the equation; it is the activity selection and, later, food tracking accuracy. A calculated TDEE confirmed by two to three weeks of stable weight at that intake is, by definition, your measured maintenance, and from that point the equation has done its job and your own data takes over.

Why does the same weight loss advice not work at my size?

Because fixed calorie cuts are not proportional. A 500 kcal deficit is 18% of a 2,759 maintenance and 36% of a 1,382 maintenance, which is the difference between a firm diet and an unsustainable one. That is why this page's goals are percentages, and why it carries a floor caution for small maintenances: the arithmetic has to respect the size of the person it is applied to.

Related calculators

Method and sources: Mifflin MD et al., "A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990; Roza AM and Shizgal HM, "The Harris Benedict equation reevaluated", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1984; Katch-McArdle equation as published in Exercise Physiology (Katch, Katch and McArdle); activity multipliers as standardly published with these equations. Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.