What's your TDEE?

What is TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)?

Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories your body burns in a day — from keeping your heart beating, to walking around, to a hard workout. It's the single most useful number for managing your weight: eat at your TDEE and your weight holds steady; eat below it and you lose; eat above it and you gain. Because it can't be measured directly outside a lab, this calculator estimates your TDEE from your age, sex, height, weight, and activity level.

What makes up your TDEE

Your TDEE is the sum of three things:

• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) — roughly 60–75%. The energy your body uses at complete rest to run vital functions like breathing, circulation, and cell repair. It's driven mostly by your size and your lean (muscle) mass.
• Physical activity — roughly 15–30% or more. This splits into exercise activity (deliberate workouts) and non-exercise activity, or NEAT (walking, fidgeting, standing, chores). NEAT varies enormously between people and is often the bigger lever.
• Thermic effect of food (TEF) — roughly 10%. The calories burned digesting your food. Protein has by far the highest thermic effect — your body burns about 20–30% of protein's calories just processing it, versus 5–10% for carbs and 0–3% for fat.

How is TDEE calculated?

It's two steps. First we estimate your Basal Metabolic Rate using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation¹ — the formula research has found to be more accurate than the older Harris-Benedict equation² for most healthy adults³:

If you enter your body fat %, we switch to the Katch-McArdle formula⁵, which bases BMR on your lean mass and can be more accurate for lean or muscular people. Then we multiply your BMR by an activity factor⁴:

So someone with a BMR of 1,400 who is moderately active has a TDEE of about 1,400 × 1.55 ≈ 2,170 calories a day.

BMR vs TDEE: what's the difference?

Your BMR is what you'd burn lying in bed all day; your TDEE adds the calories from moving and digesting food on top. Depending on how active you are, TDEE typically runs 20–90% higher than BMR. BMR is the floor; TDEE is the real-world number to plan your eating around.

How to use your TDEE

• To maintain your weight: eat around your TDEE.
• To lose weight: eat below it. About a 500-calorie daily deficit yields roughly 1 pound of fat loss per week; 1,000 a day, about 2 pounds. A gentler 250–500 deficit is usually the most sustainable — and don't drop below about 1,200 calories (women) or 1,500 (men) without clinical supervision.
• To build muscle: eat slightly above it — a 200–350 calorie surplus supports lean gains without much added fat.

Treat the number as a starting point. Track your weight for 2–3 weeks; if it isn't moving the way you expect, adjust by 100–200 calories and reassess. Recalculate every 10–20 lbs of change, too — your TDEE falls as you lose weight, which is one reason progress can plateau. To turn your TDEE into a specific daily target, use our calorie deficit calculator.

How to increase your TDEE

You have more control over your TDEE than you might think:

• Build muscle. Strength training raises your BMR because muscle is more metabolically active than fat — and it protects lean mass while you lose weight, which matters especially on a GLP-1 medication.
• Raise your NEAT. Stairs instead of the elevator, walking meetings, standing, even fidgeting add up — everyday movement can swing your TDEE by hundreds of calories a day.
• Prioritize protein. It has the highest thermic effect and builds the muscle that raises your BMR. See our protein calculator.
• Stay hydrated. Adequate water supports metabolism and appetite control. See our water intake calculator.

TDEE vs BMI

They answer different questions. TDEE is a dynamic calorie estimate that guides how much to eat. BMI is a static screen that uses only your height and weight to flag whether your weight may be affecting your health. Use them together — check your range with our BMI calculator, then plan your intake with your TDEE.

How accurate is this calculator?

TDEE estimates are generally within about 10% of real-world expenditure. The biggest source of error is overestimating your activity level — most people do. Choose the level that honestly reflects a typical week, treat the result as a starting point, and let a few weeks of real tracking fine-tune it. For guidance that accounts for your labs, history, and any medication, talk with the clinician-led team at JumpstartMD.

TDEE is an estimate, not a precise measurement or medical advice. It may not accurately reflect people with high muscle mass, pregnant or breastfeeding women, children, older adults, athletes, or specific race/ethnic groups, and should not be used as a sole diagnostic tool. It does not determine eligibility for any treatment. Talk with a JumpstartMD clinician for guidance tailored to you.

References

1. Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;51(2):241–247. ↩
2. Harris JA, Benedict FG. A Biometric Study of Basal Metabolism in Man. Carnegie Institution of Washington; 1919. ↩
3. Frankenfield D, Roth-Yousey L, Compher C. Comparison of predictive equations for resting metabolic rate in healthy nonobese and obese adults: a systematic review. J Am Diet Assoc. 2005;105(5):775–789. ↩
4. Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization, United Nations University. Human Energy Requirements. Rome; 2004. ↩
5. McArdle WD, Katch FI, Katch VL. Exercise Physiology: Nutrition, Energy, and Human Performance. Wolters Kluwer. (Katch-McArdle method.) ↩