TDEE and calorie calculator
Your TDEE is the total energy you burn in a day, resting and moving. Fill in the five fields and the number updates as you type.
Daily calories to maintain
BMR calories. BMR is what your body uses over 24 hours at rest, before any walking, work or training is counted.
Daily calories by direction
| Direction | Calories a day |
|---|---|
| Aggressive deficit | |
| Moderate deficit | |
| Maintain | |
| Moderate surplus | |
| Aggressive surplus |
Protein a day. The range is 1.6 g to 2.2 g per kg of bodyweight, so it tracks your weight rather than your calorie target.
These figures are an estimate from a formula, not a measurement. Two people at the same height, weight, age and activity level can sit a few hundred calories apart.
What to do with the number
Pick a direction and hold it for the length of your program. Weigh yourself in the same conditions a few times a week and read the average, not a single morning. Two or three weeks of those averages tell you whether the estimate was close. If the average is not moving the way the direction you picked says it should, shift the daily figure by 100 to 200 calories and hold that for another two weeks.
How many calories should I eat?
Your bodyweight, height, age, sex and weekly movement all feed the number, which is why a figure from an article rarely fits. A 90 kg man on his feet all day burns several hundred calories more than a 60 kg woman at a desk, and neither of them is served by the same target. The calorie calculator above puts your own figures through the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiplies the result by an activity factor.
Eat under the maintenance figure to lose weight, over it to gain, at it to hold your weight while you train. A deficit of 300 to 500 calories and a surplus of 200 to 400 are the usual working ranges, and both of them are in the table above.
Activity levels and what they mean
The multiplier covers everything outside your resting metabolism: walking, work, training and fidgeting. Pick the line that describes your week as it actually runs.
| Level | Week | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | Desk work, little walking, no training | 1.2 |
| Light | Training 1 to 3 days a week | 1.375 |
| Moderate | Training 3 to 5 days a week | 1.55 |
| Heavy | Training 6 or 7 days a week, or a physical job | 1.725 |
| Athlete | Two sessions a day, or a physical job plus training | 1.9 |
The formula
BMR comes from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, published in 1990. For men it is 10 times weight in kg, plus 6.25 times height in cm, minus 5 times age in years, plus 5. For women the last term is minus 161 instead of plus 5. TDEE is that figure multiplied by the activity level.
The calculator sets a daily intake. It does not set the loads you lift: Programmd programs print an effort target as reps in reserve and leave the weight column blank, because the load that leaves you two reps short changes week to week.
A program gives you the training side. Find one matched to your goal.
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