TDEE Calculator

What is TDEE?

Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories your body burns in a day. It combines the energy you'd burn at complete rest (your BMR) with the energy used by everyday movement, exercise, and digesting food. Knowing your TDEE is the single most useful number for controlling your weight: eat below it and you lose fat, eat above it and you gain weight.

How this calculator works

LeanGauge uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, one of the most studied formulas for adults in general. Like any formula it is an estimate: it tends to miss more in athletes, very muscular people and people with obesity. If you enter your body fat %, the calculator switches to the Katch-McArdle formula, which works from lean mass. The Basal Metabolic Rate is then multiplied by an activity factor to get your TDEE. Results come with a likely range, because your real burn is only confirmed by tracking your weight for a few weeks.

Losing or gaining weight

A deficit of about 500 calories per day leads to roughly 0.45 kg (1 lb) of fat loss per week. Our calorie deficit calculator lets you dial in a faster or slower pace. For muscle gain, a modest surplus of 250–350 calories supports growth while limiting fat gain.

How TDEE is calculated

TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is everything you burn in 24 hours: resting metabolism (BMR), digesting food, everyday movement and exercise. The calculator first estimates BMR with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiplies it by an activity factor:

• 1.2 — sedentary (desk job, little or no exercise)
• 1.375 — lightly active (1–3 workouts a week)
• 1.55 — moderately active (3–5 workouts a week)
• 1.725 — very active (6–7 workouts a week)
• 1.9 — extremely active (physical job or twice-a-day training)

Worked example

Man, 30, 80 kg (176 lb), 178 cm (5'10"): BMR of 1,768 kcal. Lightly active, his TDEE is 1,768 × 1.375 = about 2,430 kcal. If he starts training 4 times a week (1.55) it rises to about 2,740 kcal — 310 kcal more per day, roughly a small meal.

The most common mistake: overrating your activity

Someone who trains an hour a day but sits the rest of it is usually "lightly" or "moderately" active, not "very active". An hour at the gym burns less than it feels like, and the other 23 hours weigh more. When in doubt, pick the lower level: adding calories later is easier than discovering a month in that the scale hasn't moved.

Movement outside workouts — walking, stairs, standing — is called NEAT. It varies a lot between people and explains much of the gap between those who "eat a lot and never gain" and those who gain easily. The steps calculator shows what your daily steps are worth in calories.

From TDEE to your goal

• Maintain: eat around your TDEE.
• Lose fat: a 300–500 kcal daily deficit typically yields 0.3–0.5 kg (0.7–1.1 lb) a week without hurting performance. The deficit calculator runs the numbers for the pace you pick.
• Build muscle: a 200–300 kcal surplus is enough for most people; more than that tends to become fat.

Whatever the goal, protein is the macro that matters most — find your range with the protein calculator.

Adjusting over time

TDEE is an estimate with roughly a 10% margin of error. The most reliable way to calibrate it is to eat the calculated amount for two to three weeks and compare weekly average weights (weighing daily and averaging smooths out water swings). If your weight held steady, that's your real TDEE. If it moved, adjust by 100–200 kcal and repeat. Recalculate whenever your weight changes by 4–5 kg (10 lb) or your training routine changes.

Frequently asked questions