Free Calorie Calculator (TDEE)

Free calorie calculator. 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.

What is TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)?

The energy your body uses each day splits into two parts: your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), the calories burned even if you did nothing but rest, and the extra calories burned through movement. Add them together and you get TDEE — your total daily energy expenditure. Eat roughly at your TDEE and your weight holds steady; eat less and it drops; eat more and it rises. This tool works out your TDEE from your sex, age, height, weight, and activity level, then shows target calories for losing, maintaining, and gaining weight.

The number this tool produces is only a statistical estimate. Actual energy expenditure varies with muscle mass and individual metabolism even at the same body size, so it is best treated as a starting point that you refine by tracking your real weight over several weeks. The lose/gain guidelines assume a 500 kcal daily swing, but avoid pushing that further — extreme restriction tends to backfire on your health.

How to calculate your TDEE

Enter your sex and age Basal metabolic rate depends on both, so the calculator needs them to run the formula.
Enter your height and weight Use your current measurements rather than a target weight so the result reflects what you burn today.
Choose your activity level Pick the option closest to your real routine. If unsure, leaning toward a lower level keeps the estimate closer to reality.
Check the figure that matches your goal The result lists maintenance, weight-loss, and weight-gain targets — use whichever row matches what you are trying to do.

Tips for getting more out of it

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.

When to use a TDEE calculator

Set a weight-loss calorie target

Instead of cutting food by feel, you get a concrete number derived from your actual energy expenditure, making it easier to pace the loss sensibly.

Plan intake during a bulking phase

When gaining weight alongside strength training, this shows how much extra you actually need to eat.

Diagnose a weight-loss plateau

Recalculating at your current, lower weight often reveals that your calorie needs have dropped along with it.

Compare how activity changes your needs

Running the numbers at different activity levels shows, in concrete kcal, how much exercise habits move your energy needs.

Calorie calculation terms

TDEE: Total Daily Energy Expenditure — your basal metabolic rate plus the calories burned through activity, used as the benchmark for maintaining weight.
BMR: Basal Metabolic Rate — the energy your body burns lying still at rest, spent on things like maintaining body temperature and organ function.
Activity level: A tiered description of how much you move day to day, used as the multiplier applied to your BMR.
Calorie balance: The difference between calories eaten and calories burned. Its sign determines whether you gain or lose weight.
kcal: Kilocalorie, the standard unit of food energy used on nutrition labels and in calorie calculations.

FAQ

BMR is the minimum energy your body burns at complete rest. TDEE adds the energy you burn through work, exercise, and daily activity on top of that BMR, giving your total calorie burn for the day — TDEE is the figure to use for actual weight management.

One kilogram of body fat is estimated to store roughly 7,200 kcal of energy. A sustained daily surplus or deficit of 500 kcal adds up to about 3,500 kcal a week, which works out to roughly 0.45–0.5 kg of weight change — a widely used general rule of thumb.

Pick "Sedentary" if you mostly sit at a desk with little exercise, or "Lightly active" if you move your body a few times a week. If you are unsure, choosing a lower activity level is the safer bet.

Extreme calorie restriction well below your TDEE or even your BMR is not recommended — it carries a high risk of muscle loss, a slowed metabolism, and nutrient deficiencies. A moderate, sustainable calorie adjustment is generally preferred.

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.

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