Free tool
TDEE calculator: your total daily energy expenditure
Find out how many calories you burn on an average day, and see the BMR figure underneath it. Supports both Mifflin-St Jeor and Katch-McArdle.
Last reviewed August 30, 2026 by the Caloris nutrition product team.
TDEE calculator
Your result
2,250kcal / day
This is your total daily energy expenditure — the calories you burn on an average day at this activity level. Eat this to hold your weight, less to lose it, more to gain.
- BMR
- 1,452
- Activity burn
- +798
- BMI
- 24.2
Formula used: Mifflin-St Jeor — add a body-fat percentage below for a lean-mass-based estimate.
What TDEE is made of
Your daily burn breaks into four components, and they are not equally easy to influence:
- Basal metabolic rate (about 60–70%). Organs, body temperature, cell maintenance. Largely fixed by body size and lean mass.
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (about 15–30%). Walking, standing, fidgeting, housework. This is the component that varies most between people and the one that quietly drops when you diet.
- Thermic effect of food (about 10%). The energy cost of digestion. Protein has the highest thermic effect, which is part of why higher-protein diets feel more forgiving.
- Exercise (0–20% for most people). Usually smaller than people expect. An hour of moderate cardio is often less than a single generous restaurant portion.
Activity multipliers, in plain terms
| Level | Multiplier | What it actually means |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | ×1.2 | Desk job, little or no deliberate exercise |
| Lightly active | ×1.375 | Light exercise or sport 1–3 days a week |
| Moderately active | ×1.55 | Moderate exercise or sport 3–5 days a week |
| Very active | ×1.725 | Hard exercise 6–7 days a week |
| Extremely active | ×1.9 | Physical job, or hard training twice a day |
If you are between two levels, choose the lower one. An over-estimated multiplier inflates your maintenance figure, which means a calorie target that looks like a deficit but is not one — and that is the single most common reason people conclude that calorie counting “does not work for them”.
Turning TDEE into a plan
TDEE on its own is just a number. To use it:
- Subtract 250–500 calories for fat loss, or add the same for a lean gain. The calorie calculator does this step for you.
- Split the result into protein, carbs and fat with the macro calculator.
- Log against it consistently for two to three weeks. This is the step that decides whether any of the maths matters — and where an AI calorie counter helps, because logging a meal from a photo takes seconds rather than minutes.
- Compare weekly average weight, not single weigh-ins, and adjust the target by about 10% if the trend is flat.
Frequently asked questions
What is TDEE?
TDEE stands for total daily energy expenditure: the total number of calories your body burns in a typical 24-hour period. It is made up of your basal metabolic rate (calories burned at rest), the thermic effect of food (calories used digesting what you eat, roughly 10% of intake), deliberate exercise, and non-exercise activity thermogenesis — fidgeting, walking, standing and everything else you do without calling it a workout.
What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?
BMR is what you would burn lying completely still all day, keeping only your organs running. TDEE is BMR plus everything you actually do. For most people TDEE is 20% to 90% higher than BMR depending on how active they are, which is why the activity multiplier matters more than any other input in the calculation.
Which activity level should I pick?
Pick the level that matches your average week, not your best week. If you train three or four times a week and otherwise sit at a desk, 'lightly active' or 'moderately active' is usually right — 'very active' is for people training hard six or seven days a week, and 'extremely active' really means a physical job on top of training. Over-selecting activity is the most common reason a calculated calorie target does not produce the expected result.
Is Mifflin-St Jeor or Katch-McArdle more accurate?
Katch-McArdle is more accurate if you genuinely know your body-fat percentage, because it predicts from lean mass rather than total weight — which matters for people who are very lean, very muscular, or carrying a lot of fat mass. Mifflin-St Jeor is more reliable for everyone else, because a guessed body-fat figure introduces more error than it removes. This calculator uses Mifflin-St Jeor by default and switches to Katch-McArdle only if you enter a body-fat percentage.
How accurate is a TDEE calculator?
Prediction equations typically land within about 10% of measured expenditure for most people, but individual variation is real: two people with identical height, weight, age and sex can differ by several hundred calories a day. Use the calculated figure as a hypothesis, track intake and weight for two to three weeks, and correct from what the scale actually does.
Does my TDEE change as I lose weight?
Yes, in two ways. A smaller body burns fewer calories doing the same activity, and prolonged dieting also causes a modest additional drop in expenditure beyond what the weight change predicts. Recalculate your TDEE after every 5 kg (roughly 10 lb) of weight change rather than holding the original number all the way through.
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