TDEE Calculator

Free TDEE Calculator: Find Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure

This free TDEE calculator computes your Total Daily Energy Expenditure — the exact number of calories your body burns each day at your current activity level. Enter your age, sex, height, weight, and how active you are, and the calculator instantly shows your maintenance calories, recommended intake for fat loss, and targets for lean muscle gain.

TDEE is the foundation of any evidence-based nutrition plan. It's what fitness coaches, registered dietitians, and apps like MyFitnessPal use to set calorie targets — because every goal (lose fat, build muscle, maintain weight) starts from the same number: how many calories you burn in a day. This calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, the most accurate BMR formula for most adults based on peer-reviewed research, and applies activity multipliers validated by the American College of Sports Medicine.

How TDEE Is Calculated: BMR × Activity Multiplier

TDEE = BMR × Activity Factor. Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the calories your body needs at complete rest — breathing, circulation, cellular repair. The Mifflin-St Jeor formula calculates BMR as: for men, (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) − (5 × age) + 5; for women, the same formula ending in −161 instead of +5.

BMR is then multiplied by an activity factor: 1.2 for sedentary (desk job, no exercise), 1.375 for light activity (1–3 days/week), 1.55 for moderate activity (most gym-goers), 1.725 for very active people who train most days, and 1.9 for athletes or those with physically demanding jobs who also train. This gives TDEE — the calorie amount that keeps your weight stable. The calculator also offers the older Harris-Benedict formula for comparison; differences are typically 50–150 calories for most adults.

Using TDEE for Weight Loss, Muscle Gain, or Maintenance

Once you know your TDEE, setting a calorie target is straightforward. For fat loss, subtract 500 calories/day to lose roughly 0.5 kg (1 lb) per week — the pace most nutrition researchers consider safe and sustainable. For faster loss, a 750 calorie deficit targets 0.75 kg/week. Deficits beyond 1,000 calories/day increase risk of muscle loss and nutrient shortfalls. For muscle gain, a 200–300 calorie surplus above TDEE is enough to fuel muscle protein synthesis without excessive fat gain — a strategy called lean bulking.

For maintenance, eating at TDEE keeps weight stable. This is useful during diet breaks, during competition seasons for athletes, or as a sustainable long-term anchor. This calculator displays all three scenarios — deficit targets, maintenance, and surplus targets — in one view so you can set your goal and start planning without any manual arithmetic.

TDEE vs Competitors: TDEECALCULATOR.NET, MyFitnessPal, Healthline, Calculator.net

TDEECALCULATOR.NET is the most popular dedicated TDEE tool — clean, fast, uses Mifflin-St Jeor, and also offers Katch-McArdle (body-fat-based). Its weaknesses: server-side processing, heavy ad load, and browser cookies that store your inputs. MyFitnessPal calculates TDEE during account setup but requires account creation, links calorie data to an advertising profile, and charges for full macro breakdowns (the free tier was cut back significantly in 2022). Healthline's TDEE content is solid editorially, but their embedded calculator is minimal and calls a third-party server. Calculator.net is thorough but also server-side with significant ad load. Cronometer requires an account and is focused on micronutrient tracking, not TDEE estimation.

UtiloKit's TDEE calculator matches the formula accuracy of TDEECALCULATOR.NET and calculator.net, offers both Mifflin-St Jeor and Harris-Benedict, and runs every calculation locally in your browser. No server call. No account. No ad network tied to your health measurements. Your weight and activity level are processed and discarded when you close the tab.

TDEE on Mobile: iPhone, Android, and Offline Use

The calculator is fully responsive — tested on 375px iPhone screens and 768px tablet layouts. Number inputs trigger numeric keyboards on iOS and Android automatically. Activity-level selection uses large tap targets easy to use with a thumb. Results scale cleanly across screen widths with no horizontal overflow.

Because all processing runs as client-side JavaScript, the tool loads fast on slow mobile connections and works offline once the page is cached in your browser. This makes it practical to check your targets at the gym or on the go without a stable connection — a real practical advantage over server-dependent tools like TDEECALCULATOR.NET or MyFitnessPal's web interface, both of which fail or degrade on poor connections. No app to install. Bookmark the page and use it any time.

The Four Components of TDEE: BMR, TEF, NEAT, and EAT

TDEE is not a single number — it is the sum of four distinct energy compartments. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the largest component, accounting for roughly 60–75% of total daily expenditure: the calories your body burns at complete rest to sustain organ function, blood circulation, thermoregulation, and cellular repair. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) contributes approximately 10% of TDEE and represents the energy cost of digesting, absorbing, and metabolizing the food you eat. TEF varies dramatically by macronutrient: protein has the highest thermic effect at 20–30% of its calories (roughly a quarter of every protein calorie is burned during processing), carbohydrate sits at 5–10%, and dietary fat has the lowest at just 0–3%.

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) covers every movement that is not deliberate exercise — fidgeting, standing, walking to the kitchen, posture adjustments, typing, and the countless micro-movements throughout a waking day. NEAT typically accounts for 15–30% of TDEE and is the most variable component between individuals: research by Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic found that NEAT differences between lean and obese individuals of similar build can exceed 2,000 calories per day. Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT) — the calories burned during intentional workouts — is the component most people focus on, but it typically contributes only 5–10% of TDEE for recreational exercisers. This is why NEAT is the most powerful lever for increasing daily calorie expenditure without changing a formal exercise program: taking the stairs, standing at a desk, or walking during phone calls can add hundreds of calories burned per day with no additional gym time.

Understanding these four compartments explains why two people with identical TDEE calculator results can have very different real-world calorie needs. Someone with a high-NEAT lifestyle — a restless, always-moving person — burns substantially more than a similarly sized person who sits still. Activity multipliers attempt to capture the combined effect of NEAT and EAT, which is why choosing the right multiplier (and erring slightly conservative) produces a more accurate estimate.

BMR Formulas Compared: Mifflin-St Jeor, Harris-Benedict, and Katch-McArdle

Three BMR equations dominate nutrition practice, each with different input requirements and accuracy profiles. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation (1990) is the current gold standard for most adults: for men, BMR = 10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) − 5 × age + 5; for women, the same formula with −161 in place of +5. A 2005 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found Mifflin-St Jeor predicted resting metabolic rate within 10% for 82% of participants. As a worked example: a 30-year-old male, 75 kg, 180 cm gives BMR = 10(75) + 6.25(180) − 5(30) + 5 = 750 + 1,125 − 150 + 5 = 1,730 kcal.

The Harris-Benedict equation, originally published in 1919 and revised in 1984, uses slightly different coefficients: men's BMR = 88.362 + 13.397 × weight(kg) + 4.799 × height(cm) − 5.677 × age; women's BMR = 447.593 + 9.247 × weight(kg) + 3.098 × height(cm) − 4.330 × age. Harris-Benedict tends to overestimate BMR by 5% compared to Mifflin-St Jeor for the typical modern adult — a gap of roughly 80–120 calories at average body sizes. Both equations use only weight, height, age, and sex.

The Katch-McArdle formula takes a fundamentally different approach: BMR = 370 + 21.6 × lean body mass(kg), where lean body mass = total weight × (1 − body fat fraction). Because it bypasses sex entirely and works directly from metabolically active tissue, Katch-McArdle is the most accurate formula for lean athletes, bodybuilders, or anyone whose body composition diverges significantly from population averages. Its limitation is practical — it requires a reliable body fat percentage measurement, ideally from DEXA scanning or hydrostatic weighing rather than consumer bioelectrical impedance devices, which can vary by 3–5 percentage points depending on hydration. For most people without a body fat measurement, Mifflin-St Jeor is the appropriate default.

Activity Multipliers, Adaptive Thermogenesis, and Why Plateaus Happen

The standard activity multipliers — Sedentary (×1.2), Lightly Active (×1.375), Moderately Active (×1.55), Very Active (×1.725), and Extra Active (×1.9) — originated in the Harris-Benedict research and have been applied broadly ever since. They are rough approximations. Doubly-labeled water studies, which measure actual total energy expenditure using isotope-labeled water over 10–14 days, consistently show that most people overestimate their activity level: typical sedentary-to-moderate office workers have real-world multipliers in the 1.3–1.4 range, not the 1.55 many would self-report. Choosing an inflated activity multiplier is one of the most common reasons people believe they are eating at a deficit while actually eating at maintenance.

Adaptive thermogenesis is a second, more fundamental reason TDEE calculations lose accuracy over time. When calorie intake is restricted, the body responds by reducing energy expenditure beyond what the loss of body mass alone would predict. Research on severe caloric restriction — including the landmark Minnesota Starvation Experiment and more recent controlled trials — documents TDEE dropping 100–400 kcal below predicted values after sustained deficits. This metabolic adaptation persists even after weight loss stops and can last months. It is the primary physiological mechanism behind weight-loss plateaus: the TDEE you calculated at the start of a diet is no longer accurate after 8–12 weeks of consistent deficit.

The practical implication is to treat any TDEE calculator output — including this one — as a starting estimate, not a permanent prescription. Track actual body weight trends over 2–3 weeks and adjust intake based on observed results rather than calculated targets alone. If weight is not moving in the expected direction, recalculate with your current weight and reassess your activity multiplier before concluding the formula is wrong. Most discrepancies trace back to inaccurate activity selection or adaptive thermogenesis, not formula error.

Caloric Targets, Protein Requirements, and Muscle Protein Synthesis

The popular rule that a 3,500-calorie deficit equates to one pound of fat loss traces back to Max Wishnofsky's 1958 paper and was later refined by Forbes (1972). It remains a useful approximation but not a precise law — the actual caloric value of a pound of lost tissue depends on how much of that tissue is fat versus lean mass, and lean mass contains far less stored energy than adipose tissue. In practice, a daily deficit of 250–500 calories (targeting 0.25–0.5 kg loss per week) preserves more lean mass than aggressive deficits, triggers weaker adaptive thermogenesis, and is far more sustainable. Deficits exceeding 1,000 calories/day accelerate muscle catabolism and provoke stronger metabolic adaptation — the larger the deficit, the harder the eventual plateau. For muscle gain, experienced lifters benefit from a modest surplus of just 100–200 calories above TDEE: larger surpluses do not proportionally increase muscle protein synthesis because MPS is rate-limited by training stimulus, and excess calories primarily accumulate as fat.

Protein intake interacts directly with both TDEE and body composition. The Dietary Reference Intake recommendation of 0.8 g/kg/day reflects the minimum required to prevent deficiency in sedentary adults — not an optimal target for anyone training or attempting to change body composition. A 2018 meta-analysis by Morton et al. (British Journal of Sports Medicine, 49 randomized controlled trials, 1,800 participants) identified 1.6–2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day as the range that maximizes muscle protein synthesis in response to resistance training. At the upper end of this range, a 75 kg person would consume 165 g of protein daily — providing approximately 660 calories from protein while burning roughly 130–200 of those calories during digestion due to protein's 20–30% thermic effect, effectively making high-protein diets marginally self-limiting in net caloric contribution.

Meal timing also influences how effectively protein drives muscle protein synthesis. Research using isotope-tracer methods shows that a single meal containing approximately 40 g of protein near-maximally stimulates MPS; consuming double that amount in one sitting does not proportionally increase the response. Distributing daily protein across three to four meals spaced roughly three to four hours apart is more effective for sustaining elevated MPS than front-loading or back-loading protein into one or two large meals. This principle does not override total daily intake — hitting your protein target matters more than timing — but it provides a meaningful organizational framework for structuring meals once total intake is dialed in.