Calorie Calculator (TDEE)
Enter your sex, age, height, weight, and activity level to calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) — your Basal Metabolic Rate multiplied by your activity level — along with target calories for losing, maintaining, or gaining weight.
Tips
- Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is your Basal Metabolic Rate multiplied by a factor that reflects how active you are day to day — it estimates the total calories you burn in a day.
- To lose weight, a common guideline is to eat roughly 300–500 kcal below your TDEE. Cutting far more than that risks muscle loss and a slowed metabolism.
- If you are unsure which activity level fits you, count your actual weekly exercise sessions first — underestimating tends to give more realistic results.
- This tool uses the same revised (1984) Harris-Benedict equation for BMR as our basal metabolic rate calculator.
FAQ
Side Note — Where the "500 kcal rule" came from
The idea that a 500 kcal daily surplus or deficit changes your weight by about 0.5 kg a week traces back to a 1958 estimate by American physician Max Wishnofsky, who calculated that one pound of body fat stores roughly 3,500 kcal (about 7,200 kcal per kilogram). That figure became a standard rule of thumb in dietary guidance for decades.
More recent research has shown that as you lose weight, your basal metabolism also drops, so simple subtraction cannot perfectly predict your actual pace of weight loss. More sophisticated mathematical models — such as the Body Weight Planner developed by the US National Institutes of Health — have since emerged, yet the "500 kcal rule" is still widely taught as a rough starting point.
The TDEE this tool calculates is also just an estimate based on statistical formulas. Actual calorie burn varies significantly between individuals — even two people with identical height, weight, and activity level can differ by hundreds of kilocalories. A practical approach is to track your weight over time and fine-tune your intake as needed.