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TDEE CALCULATOR

A TDEE calculator estimates the total number of calories your body burns in a single day. TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure and it covers everything: your resting metabolism, your workouts, your daily movement and even the energy your body uses to digest food. Knowing your TDEE is the foundation of any nutrition plan. Whether you want to lose fat, build muscle or maintain your current weight, every calorie target you set is built around this number. Use the calculator below to find yours.

What Is TDEE?

TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It is the total number of calories your body burns over the course of a full day, not just during exercise. That number includes four components:

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): The calories your body burns at complete rest just to keep you alive, powering your heart, lungs, brain and other organs. BMR is the largest component, typically accounting for 60–70% of your TDEE.

Thermic Effect of Exercise (TEE): The calories burned during intentional exercise, including lifting weights, running and cycling.

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): The calories burned through all movement that is not formal exercise, such as walking to your car, fidgeting and doing household tasks. NEAT varies significantly between individuals and is one of the main reasons two people with similar stats can have very different calorie needs.

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): The energy your body uses to digest and process food. This accounts for roughly 8–10% of total calorie burn for most people.

Add all four together and you get your TDEE. This number is your maintenance calories. Eat at this level and your weight stays stable.

How to Use Your TDEE

Your TDEE is a starting point, not a fixed target. Once you know it, you adjust up or down based on your goal.

For fat loss: Eat below your TDEE. A deficit of 300–500 calories per day is sustainable for most people and produces fat loss of roughly 0.3–0.7% of body weight per week without excessive muscle loss. If you are leaner, stay closer to the lower end of that range for your calorie deficit.

For muscle gain: Eat above your TDEE. A surplus of 200–300 calories per day gives your body the extra energy it needs to build muscle without accumulating excess body fat. Going significantly higher does not build muscle faster. It mainly adds fat.

To pair that nutrition target with smarter training, use the 1RM calculator to estimate your max and set appropriate working weights for your lifts.

For maintenance: Eat at your TDEE. This is useful as a reset phase between a cut and a bulk, or as a long-term approach if you are satisfied with your current body composition.

One important note: your TDEE is not a permanent number. It changes as your weight, body composition and activity level change. Recalculate with a calorie calculator every 4–6 weeks or any time your weight has shifted by more than 5–10 pounds.

TDEE vs BMR: What's the Difference?

BMR and TDEE are related but not the same thing, and confusing them is one of the most common nutrition mistakes people make.

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the number of calories your body burns at complete rest. Think of it as your calorie burn if you did nothing but lie in bed all day. It is calculated using your body composition stats and represents your baseline energy needs before any activity is factored in.

TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is your BMR multiplied by an activity factor. It accounts for everything you actually do in a day on top of just existing.

For most active people, TDEE is 30–60% higher than BMR. Someone with a BMR of 1,600 calories who exercises regularly might have a TDEE of 2,200–2,400 calories.

This matters because calorie targets should always be set relative to TDEE, not BMR. Eating at your BMR while living an active life puts you in a very large deficit, larger than most people intend.

For a deeper breakdown of how these two numbers differ and how they are calculated, see the Built With Science guide to TDEE vs BMR.

How This Calculator Estimates Your TDEE

Most TDEE calculators use the Mifflin-St Jeor or Harris-Benedict equations, which estimate your BMR from weight, height, age and gender alone. This calculator takes a different approach.

It uses a formula based on the Katch-McArdle equation, which estimates BMR from lean body mass: your total weight minus your body fat. This is why the calculator asks for your body fat percentage. That input allows it to account for how much of your weight is metabolically active muscle tissue versus fat, which burns significantly fewer calories at rest. If you are not sure what your current estimate is, the Built With Science body fat calculator can help you calculate it before using your TDEE result to set calories.

The result is a more individualized BMR estimate. From there, the calculator applies an activity multiplier based on your reported activity level to produce your full TDEE.

This approach is more accurate than weight-based formulas for people who carry more or less muscle than average. For example, someone who is lean and muscular will get a higher TDEE estimate than someone of the same total weight who carries more body fat, which reflects reality more closely.

All TDEE estimates carry a margin of error of roughly 10–15%. Use your result as a starting point and adjust based on real-world feedback over 2–3 weeks of tracking.

What Affects Your TDEE?

Your TDEE is determined by more than just how much you exercise. Several factors influence it, some within your control and some that are not.

Body composition: More muscle mass means a higher resting metabolism. This is one reason resistance training supports long-term fat loss. It helps maintain or increase the muscle mass that keeps your TDEE elevated.

Age: BMR tends to decline gradually with age, partly due to natural muscle loss. This is not inevitable. Consistent resistance training largely offsets this decline.

Activity level: Both formal exercise and daily non-exercise movement (NEAT) contribute to TDEE. People who are on their feet all day have meaningfully higher TDEEs than sedentary individuals with similar stats. If your training volume or daily movement changes, your hydration needs may change alongside your calorie needs. Use the Built With Science water intake calculator to estimate a daily fluid target based on your body size, activity level, and environment.

Dieting history: Prolonged calorie restriction can reduce TDEE through metabolic adaptation. Your body becomes more efficient and burns fewer calories at a given intake. This is why calorie targets sometimes need to be adjusted downward over the course of a diet.

Hormones: Thyroid function, testosterone, estrogen and other hormones all influence metabolic rate, though these factors are less directly controllable through lifestyle alone.

TDEE CALCULATOR FAQ

TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It is the total number of calories your body burns in a 24-hour period, including your resting metabolism, all physical activity, daily movement like walking and fidgeting, and the energy used to digest food. 

Your TDEE is essentially your maintenance calories: the amount you need to eat to hold your current weight steady.
TDEE is calculated by first estimating your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which is the calories you burn at rest, and then multiplying it by an activity factor that reflects how active you are. 

This calculator uses a Katch-McArdle formula to estimate BMR from your lean body mass rather than total body weight, which produces a more accurate result for most people. The activity multiplier then scales your BMR up to account for everything you do throughout the day.
There is no universally good or bad TDEE. It is simply a reflection of your body size and activity level. Most adults have a TDEE somewhere between 1,600 and 3,000 calories per day. 

Larger, more muscular and more active individuals will sit at the higher end. Smaller, more sedentary individuals will sit at the lower end. What matters is knowing your number so you can set an appropriate calorie target for your goal.
To lose weight, eat below your TDEE. A daily deficit of 300–500 calories is a sustainable starting point for most people and typically produces fat loss of 0.3–0.7% of body weight per week.

To find your calorie target, subtract your chosen deficit from your TDEE result. Track your weight over 2–3 weeks and adjust if needed. If you are not losing weight, reduce calories by 100–200 per day or increase your daily step count to raise your TDEE and widen the deficit.

If you are still learning how to lose body fat without sacrificing muscle mass or energy levels, focusing on a moderate calorie deficit and consistent resistance training is usually the most sustainable approach.
To build muscle efficiently, eat slightly above your TDEE. A surplus of 200–300 calories per day gives your body the extra energy it needs for muscle growth without accumulating excessive body fat. Add your chosen surplus to your TDEE result to get your daily calorie target.

From there, use the macro calculator to split that target into daily protein, carbs and fat.

If you are a beginner lifter, you may be able to build muscle at or even slightly below your TDEE in the early months. Past the beginner stage, a controlled surplus becomes necessary to keep progressing.
TDEE calculators provide estimates, not exact measurements. Even well-validated formulas carry a margin of error of roughly 10–15% due to individual variation in metabolism, NEAT and how your body responds to different foods.

Treat your result as a starting point. Eat at your calculated TDEE for 2–3 weeks while tracking your weight. If your weight holds steady, your true maintenance is close to the estimate. If it changes, adjust calories by 100–200 in the appropriate direction until your weight stabilizes.
Recalculate your TDEE every 4–6 weeks or any time your weight has shifted by 5–10 pounds or more.

As you lose or gain weight, your BMR changes, which means your TDEE changes too. Failing to update your calorie target as your body changes is one of the main reasons progress stalls over time.
Yes. As you lose weight, your body has less mass to maintain, so your BMR and TDEE both decrease. This is normal and expected. It means your calorie target will need to be adjusted downward over time to maintain the same rate of fat loss.

In some cases, prolonged dieting also causes modest metabolic adaptation beyond what weight loss alone would predict, which is another reason to recalculate regularly and adjust based on actual results.
NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which refers to the calories you burn through all movement that is not formal exercise. This includes walking, standing, fidgeting and doing chores.

NEAT varies dramatically between individuals and can account for hundreds of calories of difference in daily TDEE between two people with similar stats. Increasing your daily step count is one of the most effective ways to raise your TDEE without adding formal workout time.
Always use TDEE. BMR is your calorie burn at complete rest and does not account for any activity. Setting your calorie target based on BMR would put almost any active person in an unintentionally large deficit. Your TDEE already incorporates your activity level, making it the appropriate baseline for any calorie goal.

For a full breakdown of how BMR and TDEE differ, see the Built With Science article on TDEE vs BMR.
Muscle tissue burns more calories at rest than fat tissue does. This means two people who weigh the same but have different body compositions can have meaningfully different TDEEs. Someone carrying more muscle mass will have a higher resting metabolism and therefore a higher TDEE.

If your goal is to lose fat while maintaining or building muscle, a body recomposition calculator can help you estimate the calorie and macro targets needed to support that process.

This is one of the reasons building and maintaining muscle through resistance training supports long-term fat loss. It keeps your calorie burn elevated even when you are not exercising.
They are the same thing. Your TDEE is your maintenance calories, which is the amount of energy your body uses in a day.

Eating at your TDEE means your weight stays stable because you are matching intake to expenditure. The terms are used interchangeably, though TDEE is the technical term and maintenance calories is the more commonly used plain-language version.
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