TDEE Calculator how many calories you burn a day

How to use the TDEE calculator

Enter your sex, age, height and weight, then choose the activity level that matches a typical week, not your best week. You’ll see your TDEE, your resting burn (BMR) and calorie targets to maintain your weight or lose about 1 pound a week.

Know your body fat percentage from a scan? Tap Add it for a sharper number. The calculator then switches to a formula based on lean mass, which is more accurate for very muscular people and for people with higher body fat.

What TDEE means

Total daily energy expenditure is every calorie your body uses in 24 hours. It has three parts, and the calculator shows each one:

• Resting burn (BMR). Keeping your heart, brain, lungs and organs running. For most people this is the biggest share, usually well over half.
• Movement. Workouts plus everything else: walking, standing, chores, fidgeting. This is the part that varies most from person to person.
• Digestion. Breaking down and storing food, known as the thermic effect of food. The calculator counts it as about 10% of the total.

How your TDEE is calculated

The calculator first estimates your resting burn with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, published in 1990 and still the standard equation dietitians use for healthy adults.

Lean mass is your weight minus your fat. At 200 lb (90.7 kg) and 35% body fat, lean mass is about 59 kg. Example with Mifflin-St Jeor: a 45-year-old woman, 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm), 180 lb (81.6 kg), gets a BMR of about 1,461 calories. If she is lightly active, her TDEE is about 1,461 × 1.375 = 2,009 calories.

Activity multipliers

Your activity level is the biggest lever in the estimate, so pick honestly. Most people with desk jobs belong in the first or second row, even if they work out.

If you’re between two levels, choose the lower one. Fitness trackers and gym machines tend to overcount exercise calories, and overestimating TDEE is a common reason a “deficit” doesn’t work.

Using your TDEE to maintain or lose weight

Eat close to your TDEE and your weight should hold steady over time. Eat about 500 calories below it and you would expect to lose roughly 1 pound a week at first. The calculator shows both.

For a full plan with your goal weight, pace and a week-by-week timeline, use the calorie deficit calculator. It also stops you from planning below a safe floor: 1,200 calories a day for women and 1,500 for men, unless a clinician is guiding you.

Trying to gain muscle instead? Eat a little above your TDEE, often 200 to 300 calories, lift weights three or more times a week and keep protein high. Gaining faster than that mostly adds fat.

Then set protein with the protein calculator so the weight you lose comes mostly from fat, and grab the 7-day high-protein meal plan sized to your calories.

Why your real TDEE may be different

Any equation is an estimate for an average person with your size, age and sex. Two people with the same stats can burn a few hundred calories apart. Things the formula can’t see:

• Muscle. More muscle burns more at rest. Adding your body fat % helps.
• Past dieting. After repeated diets, the body can burn less than predicted and push hunger up.
• Thyroid and hormones. An underactive thyroid lowers resting burn. Perimenopause and low testosterone shift muscle and fat.
• Medicines. Some medicines for mood, blood pressure or diabetes can lower burn or raise appetite.
• Weight change itself. As you lose weight, your TDEE falls. Recheck every 10 pounds or so.

The best test is real life. Eat at your estimated TDEE for two to three weeks while weighing yourself a few mornings a week. If the trend holds flat, your estimate is right. If not, adjust by 100 to 200 calories.

Measuring, not guessing, at GENEVA

If the math says you should be losing and you aren’t, there is usually a reason. At GENEVA in Alpharetta, our physicians start with a body-composition scan to measure muscle and fat, and labs that can include thyroid, blood sugar, insulin and hormones. Our women’s health and men’s health teams look at the hormone side.

Your plan can include nutrition coaching, a protein and strength routine, and, if you qualify, prescription weight loss medicine such as GLP-1 medicines. These are generally for a BMI of 30 or more, or 27 or more with a weight-related condition, and a clinician decides. Not sure where you stand? Start with the BMI calculator or the why can’t I lose weight quiz. Results vary.