TDEE Calculator — Daily Calorie Needs

Work out how many calories you burn in a day, and what to eat to lose, maintain or gain weight. Uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation.

BMR
1618
kcal at rest
TDEE
2507
kcal to maintain
To lose fat
2007
kcal per day
To gain
2807
kcal per day

These are estimates with roughly a 10% error margin. Track your weight for two to three weeks and adjust by 100–200 calories if it is not moving as expected. This is general information, not medical advice.

How your TDEE is calculated

Your BMR is what your body burns at complete rest. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation estimates it from weight, height, age and sex:

Men: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) − (5 × age) + 5
Women: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) − (5 × age) − 161

Your TDEE is that BMR multiplied by an activity factor:

Activity level What it means Multiplier
Sedentary Desk job, little or no exercise, mostly sitting × 1.2
Lightly active Light exercise or walking 1–3 days a week × 1.375
Moderately active Gym or sport 3–5 days a week × 1.55
Very active Hard training 6–7 days a week × 1.725
Extremely active Physical job plus daily training, or twice-a-day sessions × 1.9

Worked example: a 30-year-old man, 170 cm and 70 kg, moderately active, has a BMR of about 1618 kcal and a TDEE of about 2507 kcal.

TDEE reference table

Daily calories for a 30-year-old man at 170 cm, by weight and activity level. Women are typically 150–250 kcal lower at the same weight and height.

Activity 50 kg 60 kg 70 kg 80 kg 90 kg 100 kg
Sedentary 1701 1821 1941 2061 2181 2301
Lightly active 1949 2087 2224 2362 2499 2637
Moderately active 2197 2352 2507 2662 2817 2972
Very active 2445 2618 2790 2963 3135 3308
Extremely active 2693 2883 3073 3263 3453 3643

Now match your target to real food

A calorie number only helps once you know what it looks like on a plate. Check the foods you actually eat:

Roti Rice Dal Paneer Browse all foods

TDEE calculator — common questions

BMR is what your body burns at complete rest just keeping you alive — breathing, circulation, brain function. TDEE is BMR plus everything else: walking, working, training, even digesting food. TDEE is the number you should plan your diet around, because nobody spends the day lying still.

A deficit of around 500 calories below your TDEE is the usual starting point, which works out to roughly half a kilogram of fat loss a week. This calculator caps the deficit at 25% of your TDEE and never suggests going below 1500 calories for men or 1200 for women, because below that it becomes very hard to get enough vitamins and minerals from food.

The Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which research has found to be the most accurate of the common predictive formulas for the general population. It still carries an error margin of roughly 10%, so treat the result as a starting point and adjust based on what actually happens to your weight over two to three weeks.

Different sites use different equations — Harris-Benedict, Katch-McArdle, Mifflin-St Jeor — and different activity multipliers. Differences of 100 to 200 calories between calculators are normal. What matters more than the exact number is picking one and tracking your weight against it.

It is an estimate based on population averages. Your real energy expenditure depends on muscle mass, genetics, sleep, medication, thyroid function and how much you fidget. Use the number as a starting point, weigh yourself over two to three weeks, and adjust by 100 to 200 calories if your weight is not moving the way you expect.

Generally no, if you have already picked an activity level that reflects your training. Doing both counts the same exercise twice. Fitness trackers also tend to overestimate calorie burn, sometimes by a wide margin.

Other calculators

Protein Calculator