TDEE and BMR Calculator
Your BMR is what your body burns at complete rest. Your TDEE is that plus everything else you do in a day — walking, working, training, digesting. TDEE is the number that matters for weight change, because it is the line you eat above or below. Enter your details below to get both, along with a calorie and protein target for your goal.
Enter your height, weight and age to see your daily calorie needs.
Every calculator on the internet will give you a slightly different TDEE, and none of them can measure you. What they do is apply a published equation to your height, weight, age and sex, then multiply by an activity factor. The result is an educated starting estimate — accurate enough to begin with, and meant to be corrected by what actually happens over the following month.
BMR and TDEE are not the same number
Basal metabolic rate is the energy cost of being alive and doing nothing: keeping your heart beating, your brain running, your body at temperature. For most adults it accounts for roughly 60 to 70 percent of total daily energy use, which surprises people who assume exercise dominates.
Total daily energy expenditure is BMR plus the rest. Conventionally it is broken into the energy cost of digesting food, the energy cost of deliberate exercise, and the energy cost of all your non-exercise movement — walking to the station, standing, fidgeting, housework. That last category varies enormously between people and is the main reason two people of identical size can have genuinely different daily needs.
If you are trying to lose or gain weight, TDEE is the reference point. Eating below it produces weight loss over time; eating above it produces gain. BMR is useful mainly as a floor to stay well clear of, not as a target.
Which equation this uses, and why
This calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. There are several in circulation — Harris-Benedict is the oldest and still widely used, Katch-McArdle takes lean body mass as an input instead of total weight — and Mifflin-St Jeor is generally the better-performing of the ones that need only height, weight, age and sex. It is what most clinical references now default to.
The formula is not a secret, and it is worth seeing how simple it is. For men: 10 × weight in kg, plus 6.25 × height in cm, minus 5 × age, plus 5. For women the same three terms, minus 161 at the end.
That simplicity is also the limitation. The equation has no way to know your muscle mass, your thyroid function, your medication, or your history of dieting. It produces a population average for someone with your dimensions. Individuals scatter around that average by a meaningful margin in both directions.
The activity multiplier is the weakest part
Once you have a BMR, every calculator multiplies it by an activity factor between about 1.2 and 1.9. This single dropdown introduces more error than the rest of the calculation combined, because the gap between "sedentary" and "moderately active" can be several hundred calories a day and people routinely pick the wrong one.
The reliable bias is upward. Almost everyone overestimates their own activity. Three gym sessions a week does not make a desk worker "very active" — it makes them lightly to moderately active with a mostly sedentary job. A construction worker who never sets foot in a gym is often more active across a week than an office worker who trains five times.
If you are unsure, pick the lower of the two options you are choosing between. An estimate that is slightly too low produces a slightly larger deficit than intended, which is a much smaller problem than the reverse — a target set too high means eating at maintenance while believing you are in a deficit, and then concluding that calories do not work.
- Sedentary (1.2)Desk job, little or no deliberate exercise, low daily step count.
- Lightly active (1.375)Desk job plus light exercise one to three days a week, or a job with some walking.
- Moderately active (1.55)Moderate exercise three to five days a week, or a job on your feet most of the day.
- Very active (1.725)Hard exercise six or seven days a week, or a physically demanding job plus training.
- Extremely active (1.9)Manual labour combined with serious daily training, or twice-daily sessions. Rare.
Turning TDEE into a calorie target
This calculator sets a weight-loss target at about 20 percent below maintenance and a muscle-gain target at about 10 percent above. Percentages rather than a flat number are deliberate: subtracting 500 calories from a 1,800-calorie maintenance is a severe cut, while subtracting it from 3,200 is barely noticeable.
Bigger deficits are not proportionally better. Beyond roughly 20 to 25 percent, hunger, fatigue and muscle loss climb faster than the extra fat loss justifies, and adherence tends to collapse. The deficit you actually stick to beats the aggressive one you abandon in three weeks.
Protein is worth setting alongside the calorie number rather than after it. In a deficit, adequate protein is the main dietary lever protecting muscle while you lose fat, and it is also the macronutrient most people find keeps them full. This calculator suggests roughly 1.6g per kilogram when you are losing or building, and 1.2g at maintenance.
Why your real intake will differ from the number
Two things reliably pull actual results away from the calculation, and knowing about them in advance saves a lot of frustration.
The first is logging error. Under-reporting food intake is one of the most consistently replicated findings in nutrition research, and it is not a character flaw — it is oil in the pan, the second helping, the handful of nuts, the sugar in three teas. It applies to careful people who genuinely believe their log is accurate.
The second is adaptation. As you lose weight you become smaller and cheaper to run, so the same target that produced a deficit in week one produces a smaller one by month three. Non-exercise movement also tends to fall quietly during a diet. The number needs recalculating as your weight changes, not setting once.
The practical approach is to treat the calculator output as a hypothesis. Eat at it for two to three weeks, track your weight as a weekly average rather than a daily reading, and adjust by 100 to 200 calories based on what the trend actually did. That correction is worth more than any amount of precision in the initial estimate.
Activity multipliers at a glance
Applied to your BMR to produce TDEE.
| Level | Multiplier | Typically describes |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | 1.2 | Desk job, no regular exercise |
| Lightly active | 1.375 | Light exercise 1–3 days a week |
| Moderately active | 1.55 | Moderate exercise 3–5 days a week |
| Very active | 1.725 | Hard exercise 6–7 days a week |
| Extremely active | 1.9 | Physical job plus daily training |
When you are between two levels, the lower one is the safer choice — activity is systematically over-estimated.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between BMR and TDEE?
BMR is what you burn at complete rest — the cost of staying alive. TDEE is BMR plus digestion, exercise and all your incidental daily movement. TDEE is the larger number and the one to use when setting a calorie target.
How accurate is a TDEE calculator?
It gives a reasonable population estimate for someone of your dimensions, but it cannot measure you specifically. Individual metabolic rates vary around the predicted value, and the activity multiplier adds error on top of that. Use it as a starting point and correct it based on three weeks of real-world weight data.
Should I eat below my BMR to lose weight faster?
It is not recommended. Very low intakes make adequate nutrition difficult, tend to accelerate muscle loss, and are hard to sustain. A moderate deficit from TDEE produces fat loss without those costs. If you believe you need an aggressive intervention, that is a conversation to have with a doctor or dietitian.
Which is better, Mifflin-St Jeor or Harris-Benedict?
Mifflin-St Jeor generally performs better for modern populations and is what this calculator uses. If you know your body fat percentage, the Katch-McArdle equation can be more accurate still, because it works from lean mass rather than total weight.
Do I need to recalculate my TDEE as I lose weight?
Yes. A smaller body burns less, so a target set at your starting weight gradually becomes less of a deficit. Recalculating every 4 to 5kg of change, or whenever progress stalls for two or three weeks, keeps the number honest.
Why is my weight not changing even though I am eating at my target?
The two usual explanations are that intake is higher than logged, or that the activity multiplier was set too high, so the 'deficit' is actually maintenance. Water weight also masks fat loss over short windows, which is why a weekly average is more informative than any single morning's reading.
How much protein should I eat?
Roughly 1.6g per kilogram of body weight is a reasonable target when losing weight or building muscle, and about 1.2g at maintenance. Protein preserves muscle in a deficit and is the macronutrient most people find most filling.
Other calculators
Numbers are the easy part
A calorie target only does something once you know what you are actually eating. Describe your meal in plain language or send a photo, and Pulze estimates the calories and protein for it — including the food a generic database has never heard of.
Open the food trackerLast reviewed 25 August 2026. These calculators use published equations and give estimates, not measurements. This is general information, not medical advice — for decisions about your health, speak to a doctor or a registered dietitian.