Your TDEE is a daily baseline estimate of the number of calories you burn every day.
It’s calculated first by determining your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and then using an activity multiplier to determine how many additional calories you’re likely burning in a day.
As always, if you need help taking things further, check out incredible meal planning app here.
TDEE is the today daily energy expenditure. It’s the estimate of the total amount of calories you will burn in a day. Eating above this number will result in weight gain. Eating below this number should results in weight loss.
Because humans are unique & dynamic – there are several ways to calculate your daily energy expenditure. In the calculator above, we use – but there are several formulas people use for various reasons (more on that in a second).
There are several calculators you can use to estimate TDEE, the one we use above is , but you can use any of the calculators below as well.
Men: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age in years) + 5
Women: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age in years) – 161
Essentially the equation is the same ((10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age in years)), but at the end, you either add +5 for men, or remove -161 for women.
This is generally considered the standard in BMR calculators these days, although – the Harris Benedict Equation was used for over 70 years all the way back to 1919.
This has separate equations for men & women. It requires your age, weight and height to calculate. Once you have those pieces of information, you plug it into these equations.
Women
BMR = 655.1 + (9.563 × weight in kg) + (1.850 × height in cm) – (4.676 × age).
Men
BMR = 66.5 + (13.75 × weight in kg) + (5.003 × height in cm) – (6.75 × age).
The Katch-McArdle equation is an alternate formula to calculate BMR.
It takes into account lean body mass.
Determine your lean body mass in KG.
Multiply lean body mass by 21.6
Add 370 to the results – this total is your BMR.
There is no separate equation for men & women because the base equation is based on your lean body mass (the equation to extract your lean body mass for men & women may different)
BMR = 370 + (21.6 × Lean Body Mass [kg])
To calculate your Lean Body Mass (LBM), you can use the following formula.
LBM = (Weight [kg] × (100 – Body Fat %) / 100
The Cunningham formula is a less-used, but simple formula. It’s significantly less used than any of the other formulas we listed above.
BMR (kcal/day) = 500 + 22 x lean body mass
Any questions? Let us know – we’re always updating our TDEE resources and making it as useful as possible.
