Free calorie calculator
TDEE Calculator
See how many calories you actually burn in a day — and what to do with the number. Your total daily energy expenditure from BMR and a lifter-real activity ladder, plus cut, maintain, and bulk targets built on top.
Have an estimate? It switches BMR to the lean-mass Katch–McArdle formula. Leave blank to use Mifflin–St Jeor.
Pick the row that matches your whole day, not just the gym. Your lifting is already counted — don't add workout calories on top. Between two rows? Pick the lower one.
Fill in your age, bodyweight, and height above to see your total daily calorie burn — plus cut, maintain, and bulk targets built on top.
Free. No signup. The tool's own usage events never include your exact numbers; a share link encodes them into its URL.
This is a fitness utility, not medical or nutrition advice. TDEE estimates carry real individual variation — use the number as a starting point and adjust to your own measured results.
How TDEE is built
TDEE is two numbers multiplied together: your resting burn and how active you are. The first is your BMR — the energy your body spends at complete rest. We estimate it from the Mifflin–St Jeor equation (bodyweight, height, age, and sex), or from the Katch–McArdle equation if you enter a body-fat percentage, because that version works off your lean mass — which matters for lifters, since two people at the same scale weight can carry very different amounts of muscle and burn differently.
The second number is the activity multiplier — a factor from about 1.2 (mostly sitting) to 1.8 (a physically demanding day plus hard training) that scales your resting burn up to a full day. Multiply the two and round, and you have your maintenance calories: eat there and your weight holds.
Here's the honest part. Those multipliers are decades-old population factors, not a measurement of you — which is exactly why a TDEE estimate carries a real ±10–15% error band, and why this tool shows you a likely range, not a single confident number. The calculator gets you a good starting point fast; your own results over the next couple of weeks are what turn it into your number.
The activity ladder, translated for lifters
The classic mistake is counting four lifting hours a week as “very active” while you sit for the other twelve. The multiplier is about your whole day, not your hardest hour — and your lifting is already baked in, so you never add workout calories on top. Here's how each rung actually looks for someone who lifts.
| Activity level | Multiplier | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Mostly sitting + lifting | ×1.2 | Desk job, and lifting is most of your movement. Under ~6k steps most days. |
| Light steps + lifting | ×1.35 | Some walking on top of the gym — roughly 6k–8k steps most days. |
| Active day + lifting | ×1.5 | On your feet a fair bit — roughly 8k–12k steps most days, plus lifting. |
| On your feet + lifting | ×1.65 | 12k+ steps, an active job, or regular sport on top of lifting. |
| Physical job / two-a-days | ×1.8 | Hard training plus a physically demanding day. Most lifters should not pick this. |
Between two rungs? Pick the lower one. A slightly low estimate is easy to correct upward once the scale confirms it; a high one quietly stalls your progress and is harder to spot.
Your TDEE is a starting guess — here's the adjustment loop
A calculator can't measure your metabolism — but your bathroom scale can, indirectly, if you give it two weeks. This is the loop that turns a population estimate into your real maintenance number:
- Eat at the calculator's maintenance number for two weeks and weigh yourself most mornings.
- Take the two-week trend, not any single day — daily weight bounces around with water, food, and sleep.
- If you're holding steady, the number was right. If the trend is drifting, use the conversion: every 0.25 kg (about 0.5 lb) per week the scale moves off-plan is roughly 250 calories a day.
- Adjust your intake by that amount and repeat. Two or three loops and you'll have a maintenance number dialled in far tighter than any formula can give you.
This same loop is why you don't need to obsess over picking the perfect activity level or a precise body-fat percentage. Get in the right ballpark, then let the scale do the fine-tuning.
From TDEE to a goal
Once you know your maintenance calories, a goal is just a deliberate offset from it — a deficit to lose fat, a surplus to gain. The tool gives you the standard ladder:
| Goal | Offset from TDEE | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Steady cut | −500 kcal | ≈0.5 kg / 1 lb a week down |
| Slow cut | −250 kcal | ≈0.25 kg / 0.5 lb a week down |
| Maintain | — | hold steady, recomp territory |
| Lean bulk | +250 kcal | ≈0.25 kg / 0.5 lb a week up |
| Standard bulk | +500 kcal | ≈0.5 kg / 1 lb a week up |
Honest note on sizing: a ~500 calorie deficit is a solid, sustainable cut for most people; going much harder mostly costs you muscle and training quality, not more fat. On the other side, a lean bulk of ~250 over maintenance is usually plenty — a bigger surplus adds fat faster than it adds muscle. And all of these lean on the classic ~3,500 calories-per-pound rule, which is a planning approximation, not a law. The two-week scale trend, again, is the real arbiter of whether your deficit or surplus is the right size.
Common mistakes with TDEE
- Overrating your activity level. Four gym hours don't make a sedentary desk week “very active.” The multiplier is your whole day. When in doubt, pick the lower rung.
- Eating back workout calories. Your lifting is already in the multiplier. Adding your watch's gym burn on top double-counts it and stalls a cut.
- Treating the number as exact. It carries a ±10–15% error band. It's a starting point to calibrate from, not a verdict — use the two-week loop.
- Never recalculating. TDEE falls as you lose weight and adapts during a cut. A maintenance number from 8 kg ago runs too high today.
- Chasing a bigger deficit for faster results. A savage deficit burns muscle and wrecks training. A moderate one, held consistently, wins.
Methodology
BMR uses the Mifflin–St Jeor equation, the modern default for predicting resting energy expenditure in healthy adults. When you provide a body-fat percentage, we switch to the Katch–McArdle equation, which estimates BMR from your lean body mass instead — a better fit for lifters, whose lean mass varies more than the general population the height/weight formulas were built on. TDEE is that BMR multiplied by an activity factor (1.2 to 1.8), a slightly conservative version of the classic population multipliers, then rounded to the nearest 10 calories.
The likely range is your TDEE plus and minus roughly 10%, reflecting the real error band these methods carry. The goal targets apply the conventional ~500-calorie-per-half-kilo (per pound) energy-balance heuristic to your maintenance number, presented as starting points to adjust from measured weekly change — not as guarantees. Every one of these is a population approximation; individual metabolism, NEAT, and adaptation all vary, which is why the tool leans so hard on the two-week adjustment loop.
The calculation runs entirely in your browser. The tool's own usage events only ever send coarse buckets — a bucketed calorie range, your unit and activity choice — never your exact age, bodyweight, or calorie number. If you use the share button, your entered numbers are encoded into that link so the page can rebuild your result; that link then sits in your address bar like any other URL. This is a fitness utility, not medical or nutrition advice — anyone with a medical condition affecting metabolism or diet should talk to a qualified professional.
More free lifting tools
All free, all ungated, all built for serious lifters.
Live tool
Body Recomp Calculator
Take your maintenance number into a full recomp plan: calories, macros, training/rest split, and a realistic timeline.
Open Body Recomp CalculatorLive tool
Body Fat Calculator
Estimate your body-fat % from tape, calipers, or height and weight — then unlock a lean-mass-aware TDEE.
Open Body Fat CalculatorLive tool
Lean Body Mass Calculator
See how much of your bodyweight is lean tissue — the number that drives the Katch–McArdle BMR behind your TDEE.
Open Lean Body Mass CalculatorLive tool
Training Volume Calculator
Check your weekly hard sets per muscle against the volume that drives growth — the training side of the same equation.
Open Volume CalculatorLive tool
Exercise Library
Instructions, muscles worked, tips and common mistakes for hundreds of gym exercises.
Browse exercisesFrequently asked questions
What is TDEE?
TDEE is total daily energy expenditure — the calories you burn in a normal day. It's your resting metabolic rate scaled up by how active the rest of your day is: walking, standing, working, training. Eat at your TDEE and weight holds steady, so it's the reference point every calorie goal builds from — below it to lose, above it to gain.
What's the difference between TDEE and BMR?
BMR (basal metabolic rate) is what your body burns at complete rest to stay alive. TDEE is BMR plus everything else — moving, working, training. We estimate BMR first (Mifflin–St Jeor, or Katch–McArdle from your lean mass if you enter a body-fat %), then multiply by an activity factor to get TDEE. BMR is the floor; TDEE is the number you actually eat around.
Why is my TDEE estimate 10–15% off?
Because it's a population estimate, not a measurement of you. The BMR equations are regressions fit to thousands of people, and the activity multipliers are decades-old averages — neither can see your exact metabolism, your NEAT, or how hard you really train. The error band runs about ±10–15% for most people. That's the honest limit of any calculator — so treat the number as a start and calibrate it against your own results.
Do my lifting sessions burn as many calories as I think?
Usually less. A hard weight session burns roughly 200–400 calories for most lifters — real, but far smaller than wearables and machines report. Lifting's real value is the muscle it builds over time, not the burn in the hour. That's why this tool folds lifting into the activity multiplier instead of a big separate burn — overestimating workout calories is a top reason people think maintenance is higher than it is.
Should I eat back my exercise calories?
No. The activity multiplier already includes your training. If you pick an active, lifting lifestyle and then also add the calories your watch says you burned in the gym, you're counting workouts twice — a fast way to stall a cut. Choose the activity row that honestly describes your whole week, lifting included, and eat to that number. Don't add workout calories on top.
What if I'm between two activity levels?
Pick the lower one. The most common mistake is overrating your activity — counting four hours of lifting a week as “very active” while sitting the other twelve. The multiplier is about your whole day, not your hardest hour. The lower option gives a number that's easier to verify, and it's far easier to add calories to a low estimate than to claw them back from a high one.
How often should I recalculate my TDEE?
Recheck it when your bodyweight has moved meaningfully — roughly every 4–5 kg (10 lb) — or when your activity genuinely changes (new job, big shift in training or steps). A lighter body burns fewer calories, so an old maintenance number runs high once you've leaned out. You don't need to recalc weekly, though — the two-week scale trend handles the fine-tuning between baselines.
Does my TDEE drop while I'm cutting?
Yes — by more than the weight loss alone. A lighter body has a lower BMR and burns less moving around, and your body also adapts to a deficit by quietly spending less energy (you fidget and move less, metabolic rate dips). That's adaptive thermogenesis — normal, not a malfunction, and the main reason a deficit stops working weeks in. The fix is to recalculate off your new weight and keep using the two-week scale trend, so you always eat for the body you have now.
Log training; let your food follow a real plan
This tool gives you the number. Stronger logs your training and helps your nutrition follow a real plan built on top of your maintenance calories, so the two actually line up.
