Free tool
TDEE Calculator
Find how many calories you burn in a day and the target you should eat to lose, hold, or gain. If none of that is familiar yet, the guide under the calculator walks through it in plain terms.
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Calculate your MacrosWhat is TDEE?
TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure: the number of calories your body burns in a full day, everything included: staying alive, moving around, working, and training. It's the single most useful number in nutrition, because once you know roughly what you burn, you know what to eat to change your weight in either direction.
A calorie, quickly
A calorie is just a unit of energy: the energy in your food, and the energy your body spends. Eat about the same as you burn and your weight holds. Eat less and your body makes up the difference from stored fat, so you lose. Eat more and the extra gets stored, so you gain. That balance is the whole game; the rest is detail.
Where the number comes from
The calculator starts with your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) (what you'd burn lying in bed all day) estimated from your height, weight, age, and sex. Then it multiplies that by an activity factor to get your TDEE. That's why picking an honest activity level matters: it's the multiplier that turns "at rest" into "your actual day."
Which activity level fits you
Pick the one that matches a normal week, not your hardest one. Roughly:
| Level | Looks like |
|---|---|
| Sedentary | Desk job, little deliberate movement, under ~5k steps a day. |
| Lightly active | Mostly seated but moving a bit, ~5kâ7.5k steps. |
| Moderately active | On your feet a fair amount, ~7.5kâ10k steps. |
| Very active | Training hard 6â7 days a week, 10k+ steps. |
| Extra active | A physical job on top of hard training, 12k+ steps. |
If you're between two, pick the lower one. It's easy to overestimate how active you are, and a lower estimate is the safer place to start.
How to use your result
- Read your TDEE: that's roughly what you burn, and what to eat to hold your weight.
- Pick a goal. The tool adjusts your target: a deficit to lose fat, maintenance to stay put, a small surplus to build.
- Use the Target Calories number as your daily aim, and send it to the macro calculator to split it into protein, carbs, and fat.
This is an estimate to start from, not a precise measurement. Eat at your target for two or three weeks, watch the scale trend, and adjust by 100â200 calories if it's not moving the way you want. This is general education, not personalized nutrition or medical advice.