Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE, is the number of calories your body burns in a day once you account for everything: staying alive, digesting food, and moving around. This TDEE calculator gives you two ways to find that number and put it to work. The main calculator runs your details through four different BMR formulas side by side and builds out a full picture, including lose and gain targets, a weekly activity schedule, and food equivalents. Below it, a second Advanced TDEE Calculator focuses on a faster workflow with seven goal presets and a drag-to-adjust macro split, so you can go from BMR straight to grams of protein, carbs, and fat.

How to use the main TDEE calculator

1. Choose a BMR formula tab: Mifflin-St Jeor, Harris-Benedict, Katch-McArdle, or Owen.
2. Select your Sex (Male or Female) and your Units (Metric cm/kg or Imperial in/lb).
3. Enter your Age, Height, and Weight.
4. If you selected the Katch-McArdle tab, also enter your Body fat %, since that formula uses lean body mass instead of total weight.
5. Choose your Activity level (detailed) from the dropdown, ranging from Bed rest / recovering up to Professional athlete.
6. Click “Calculate my TDEE.”
7. Review your results: TDEE (maintenance), Energy intake to lose weight, Energy intake to gain weight, BMR (selected formula), Activity multiplier, TDEE per kg bodyweight, BMR formula spread, Weekly maintenance, and all 4 BMR formulas compared side by side.
8. Toggle Display units between Calories and Kilojoules if you prefer kJ.
9. Scroll down for the Calorie targets by rate table, Food equivalents, personalized Suggestions, and a Weekly activity & energy schedule you can target to Maintain, Lose weight, or Gain weight.
10. Use PDF report, Share, or Copy report to save your results, or check your Saved history, exportable as Excel, PDF, or CSV.

How to use the Advanced TDEE Calculator (below, in the accordion)

1. Open the “TDEE Calculator (Simple Version)” accordion section to reveal the Advanced TDEE Calculator panel.
2. Select Male or Female using the segmented control.
3. Enter your Age, Height (cm or in), and Weight (kg or lb).
4. Choose a BMR Formula: Mifflin-St Jeor, Harris-Benedict, or Katch-McArdle. Selecting Katch-McArdle reveals a Body fat % field, required for that formula.
5. Select your Activity Level: Sedentary, Lightly Active, Moderately Active, Very Active, or Extra Active.
6. Pick a Goal from the seven-button grid: Aggressive Loss, Weight Loss, Mild Loss, Maintain, Mild Gain, Weight Gain, or Fast Gain.
7. Click “Calculate” to run the numbers, or “Clear” to reset the form.
8. Review your BMR and TDEE (maintenance) stat boxes, plus your Daily Calorie Target based on the goal you picked.
9. Drag the Macro Split sliders for Protein, Carbs, and Fat to adjust the percentage split, and watch the gram values update for each macro based on your calorie target.
10. Check the Reference: BMR Formula Comparison and Reference: Activity Multipliers tables further down for a quick lookup of how each setting affects the math.

What TDEE actually measures

TDEE combines three components that make up your total daily energy burn: your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), the calories your body needs just to keep organs, cells, and basic functions running at complete rest; the thermic effect of food, the energy spent digesting what you eat; and activity energy expenditure, everything from walking around the house to a structured workout. Rather than trying to measure activity energy expenditure directly, both calculators on this page start from your BMR and then multiply it by an activity factor that approximates your typical week, which is a standard, well-validated approach in sports nutrition and clinical dietetics.

Why four BMR formulas instead of one

No single BMR equation is exactly correct for every body, so the main calculator runs your numbers through four established formulas and shows you the spread between them rather than picking one and hiding the disagreement.

The main calculator’s “BMR formula spread” and “all 4 BMR formulas” outputs let you see exactly how much these four methods disagree for your specific numbers, which is often more useful than trusting a single formula blindly.

From BMR to TDEE: the activity multiplier

Once BMR is set, both calculators multiply it by an activity factor to reach your full TDEE.

The main calculator offers a detailed 7-level scale, from Bed rest / recovering (1.0×) up to Professional athlete (2.2×), which gives finer control if your week doesn’t map cleanly onto the standard five categories. The Advanced TDEE Calculator uses the more common 5-level scale.

The main calculator’s detailed scale adds two further tiers beyond this table: Bed rest / recovering at 1.0× for illness or injury, and Professional athlete at 2.2× for elite-level training volume.

Why Katch-McArdle needs body fat percentage

Katch-McArdle is the one formula on this page that doesn’t use your total bodyweight directly. Instead, it calculates your lean body mass first (bodyweight minus fat mass) and bases BMR on that figure, since muscle tissue burns more energy at rest than fat tissue does. That’s why both calculators only ask for body fat % when you’re on that specific tab, and why skipping it there gives you an incomplete result rather than a fallback estimate.

Setting a calorie target: lose, maintain, or gain

Once TDEE is known, both calculators translate it into a daily calorie target based on what you’re trying to achieve. The main calculator shows separate tiles for “Energy intake to lose weight” and “Energy intake to gain weight” alongside maintenance, plus a full “Calorie targets by rate” table showing multiple paces at once. The Advanced TDEE Calculator instead asks you to pick one specific goal from seven presets:

A larger deficit generally produces faster weight loss but is harder to sustain and carries a higher risk of muscle loss, while a smaller, milder deficit is easier to stick with over months. The same trade-off runs in reverse on the gain side: an aggressive surplus builds weight faster but adds proportionally more fat along with muscle, while a mild surplus favors leaner gains at a slower pace.

The macro split calculator

Once the Advanced TDEE Calculator has your Daily Calorie Target, its Macro Split section lets you drag three sliders, Protein, Carbs, and Fat, to set what percentage of that target comes from each macronutrient. As you adjust a slider, the gram values update immediately for all three, converting your percentage split into actual grams per day.

This is useful once you have a calorie number and want to plan actual meals, since “2,400 calories” doesn’t tell you how to build a plate, but “180g protein, 240g carbs, 80g fat” does. The default split (30% protein, 40% carbs, 30% fat) is a reasonable general starting point, but the sliders let you shift toward a higher-protein split for muscle building or a lower-carb split, depending on your preference.

Reading the food equivalents and weekly schedule

Back in the main calculator, the “Your maintenance calories in food” section turns your TDEE number into a playful, visual comparison, showing how many servings of a single everyday food would add up to your entire day’s maintenance calories. It’s meant to make an abstract number like 2,200 calories feel more concrete rather than to suggest eating only one food all day.

The “Weekly activity & energy schedule” section works differently: you pick a target (Maintain, Lose weight, or Gain weight), and the calculator lays out a suggested activity and estimated burn for each day of the week alongside a daily intake target. As the calculator itself notes, this schedule adds variety and a rough burn estimate per session on top of your already-calculated average activity level, it does not add extra calories on top of your target.

Tracking your results over time

Both the main calculator’s History section and the Advanced TDEE Calculator’s saved entries let you keep a record of past calculations. The main calculator’s history table logs the time, formula used, TDEE, and lose/gain figures for each run, and can be exported as Excel, PDF, or CSV, or cleared entirely if you want to start fresh. This is useful if your weight, activity level, or goal changes over time, since comparing entries side by side shows how your maintenance calories have shifted.

A note on accuracy

As the calculator itself states, these are population-formula estimates, and individual metabolisms vary by 10% or more in either direction from what any formula predicts. Treat your first number as a starting point, then adjust based on real-world results over 2 to 4 weeks of consistent tracking, rather than assuming the calculated figure is exact from day one. For significant weight changes, a medical condition affecting metabolism, or if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or under 18, work with a doctor or registered dietitian instead of relying on this or any online calculator alone.

Frequently asked questions