TDEE Calculator
Find your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), plus suggested daily calorie targets for weight loss — using the Mifflin-St Jeor formula.
Suggested calorie targets
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CalorieToday tracks this automatically and adjusts as your weight changes.
Try it freeWhat is BMR and TDEE?
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the number of calories your body needs just to stay alive at complete rest — breathing, circulating blood, running your brain and organs, and maintaining body temperature. It does not include any movement or exercise. This calculator estimates BMR using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, widely considered one of the most accurate BMR formulas for the general population: BMR = 10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) − 5 × age, with +5 added for men and −161 for women.
TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) takes BMR and multiplies it by an activity factor to estimate your total calories burned in a day, including movement, exercise and daily activity. This calculator uses five standard activity tiers: Sedentary (×1.2) for a desk job with little exercise, Light (×1.375) for exercise 1–3 days a week, Moderate (×1.55) for exercise 3–5 days a week, Active (×1.725) for hard exercise 6–7 days a week, and Athlete (×1.9) for training twice a day. Picking the tier that best matches your actual week — not your aspirational week — gives the most useful estimate.
Once you know your TDEE, a calorie deficit below that number is what drives weight loss. This calculator shows three common targets based on the widely used approximation that roughly 3,500 calories equal one pound of body fat, spread across a week: a 0.5 lb/week goal uses a smaller, more sustainable daily deficit; a 1 lb/week goal uses a moderate deficit that works well for most people; and a 2 lb/week goal uses a larger deficit that's harder to sustain and generally only appropriate for people with more weight to lose. To avoid targets that are unsafely low, results are floored at 1,500 calories/day for men and 1,200 calories/day for women — if your calculated target would fall below that floor, we show the floor value instead and flag it.
Keep in mind that TDEE is an estimate, not a measurement. Real-world energy expenditure varies with sleep, stress, hormones, and how your body adapts to sustained dieting. The most reliable way to dial in your real numbers is to track your intake and weight trend consistently for a few weeks and adjust based on what actually happens — which is exactly what CalorieToday is built to do automatically as your weight changes.