TDEE Calculator

TDEE — your total daily energy budget

Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories your body burns in a day across all activities. It's the sum of your Basal Metabolic Rate (what you burn at rest), the thermic effect of food (digesting and processing food), and your activity level.

Understanding your TDEE helps you make sense of why weight changes the way it does. If you consistently eat above your TDEE, you gain weight. Below it, you lose weight. At TDEE, weight is stable. It's not quite this simple in practice (hormones, food quality, and metabolic adaptation complicate things), but energy balance is the fundamental driver.

• Activity multipliers: The standard activity categories (sedentary, lightly active, etc.) are rough guides. Most people overestimate how active they are — 'lightly active' means moderate exercise 1–3 days per week, not a daily walk.
• Metabolic adaptation: Long-term caloric restriction causes TDEE to decrease as your body adapts. This is why weight loss slows over time even with the same diet.
• Protein's thermic effect: Protein requires more energy to digest than carbohydrates or fat — eating more protein slightly increases TDEE through this thermic effect.
• TDEE vs BMR: BMR is just the resting component. For most moderately active people, TDEE is about 1.4–1.7× their BMR.